


Misplaced Property

by MalkyTop



Category: One Piece
Genre: Bodyswap, Branding, Gen, Implied Past Abuse, Implied Sexual Abuse, OP Big Bang 2016, Slavery, consider this an AU of Sanji's past, i started writing this when 'Only Alive' just happened, nothing graphic but you can probably fill in the blanks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-23
Updated: 2016-04-23
Packaged: 2018-06-04 01:00:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 34,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6634648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MalkyTop/pseuds/MalkyTop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Set after Dressrosa and Zou. Alternate version of events where Sanji's past is different.)</p><p>Only Alive. Sanji's odd bounty poster raised many questions about his past that he couldn't even answer himself. Coincidentally, the next island the Strawhats land on has the answers, but not before an errant bodyswap and mistaken identity complicates matters, and Usopp manages to get kidnapped and has to face Sanji's past for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“I honestly have no clue.”

After first seeing the bounty poster, traveling all the way to Zou, getting too wrapped up in the island's issues (much more than pirates should), too occupied with running and fighting and _everything_ to bring up the question until _now,_ this was, it had to be said, a disappointing answer.

“Okay, guess it's a mystery bounty,” said Luffy, and then he bounced off to the figurehead for the much more exciting mystery of the next island, wherever it was.

“What d'ya mean 'you don't _know!?'_ That's _your_ face on here! Someone recognized you and wants you alive! That means you should know them!”

Sanji tore his poster from Usopp's flourishing hand and pressed his face as close to his nose as the poster had been to his. Usopp had to back away just to make sure it didn't break, and even then, it bent backwards. “If I don't know, then I _don't know!_ What kinda person do you think would even have the _power_ to make someone wanted 'only alive,' _huh?_ And why the hell would I _know_ them!?”

And that was the big question, wasn't it, only it turned out the guy everybody was waiting to ask had the same questions himself.

“It's a typo,” Zoro said, sunning himself by the stairs just in time for the sunset. “Who the hell would want _you_ alive?”

That was enough to start the usual fight, which meant Nami had to knock some sense into them while the rest of the crew sat back and enjoyed the repetitive show, until Luffy jumped up and shouted so forcefully that he managed to shout himself right off the ship so that everybody had to stop what they were doing and fish him (and Chopper...and Brook…) back out again. And _that_ was when Nami noticed the reefs surrounding the whole island, which meant _another_ flurry of activity to raise the sails, anchor the ship, before they accidentally stranded themselves on the coral, and by that time, it was dinner. Food outweighed adventure for Luffy, and so everybody filed into the dining room to tire themselves out even more trying to save their food, before drifting to bed with plans to take the Mini Merry out tomorrow.

Sanji still had his poster. He looked at it now, in the dark, not able to read it but recalling its details nevertheless.

He raked his brain but couldn’t think of anything in his past that could be related. Unless it was something before memory, something to do with the very beginning of his existence. But that was as obscure to him as to everybody else, and all he could do was question himself impotently in his own mind until he was too tired to stay awake.

* * *

“Adventure lunch!” Luffy demanded first thing.

Usopp smacked the back of his captain's head in a common act of insubordination. “We haven't even eaten breakfast yet.”

“Then, adventure breakfast!”

“Sounds pretty super!” Franky laughed infectiously, and then the three of them started a loud chant of 'Ad-ven-ture Break-fast!' that eventually grew into a full on parade with music that wound its way around the deck in a languid path towards the kitchen.

“I guess _some_ people can find their fun in anything,” Nami said as she emerged from her room to be engulfed by the din outside. Though she spoke in a manner that was laced with irritation, there was a much too genuine smile on her face that betrayed her feelings.

“It's pretty lame.” Zoro had sat himself down against the stair wall, seeing that nobody seemed to actually be going to eat breakfast. “They don't even have banners.”

Nevertheless, the banner-less parade followed its course to the kitchen door, sounding much larger than it actually was, and it ended with Luffy barging inside to give his request one last announcement. He got though half of it before getting launched backwards into the mast courtesy of the Black Leg Express. The resulting impact seemed to shatter the air itself, and shook a few tangerines free from the trees above.

“ _San_ ji-kun!” Nami wailed, her heels clattering up the stairs. Sanji winced and craned his head upwards, trying to aim apologetic eyes towards the rustling orchard. “ _Ten_ tangerines! _Ten!_ ”

She said it like she had discovered ten bodies, all of which Sanji had killed, and he felt the words stab into his heart. “Shit, I, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to – I was just – “

“You dented the _mast,_ bro! The _mast!_ Be more gentle!” Franky added, peeling Luffy off from his landing spot.

“Oh piss off with your whining,” Sanji replied, though he didn't say no.

With that, the situation seemed to have passed, and Usopp cleared his throat. “So, uh, you kicked Luffy... _why?”_

Sanji stared at Usopp blankly for a moment, then lit a cigarette like he hadn't forgotten the reason at all. “When I checked our rations, I found that someone stole a few things.”

The crew swiveled their heads towards Luffy so fast, they could have all gotten whiplash. Luffy, having regained consciousness at the words 'rations' and 'stole,' immediately sat up and waved his hands in denial. “I didn't! I was framed up!”

“I thought it was him too, but I just realized that it couldn't be...”

“Realize that _before_ you kick me!”

“For one thing, the thief stole from the fridge, but thoughtfully closed and locked it again. The other thing is, the thief stole more than meat.”

“Oh, yeah, _definitely_ not Luffy.”

“For sure, for sure. He wouldn't have ever thought of cleaning up after himself like that.”

“ _Hey!”_

Before Luffy could go on to insist that he could _totally_ steal from the kitchen (and possibly get kicked again), Robin said, “How much was taken?”

“Mm, not a significant amount,” Sanji replied, shrugging easily, though the toe of his shoe kept tapping against the floor. “Makes me think the thief was a kid.”

“A kid stealing from pirates! What are parents doing nowadays.” Nami shook her head and raised her hands in mourning for the moral composition of society today, though her eyes still shot towards the island with more intense scrutiny. “So people live there...how did someone sneak on the ship? Someone _had_ to be on watch.”

But nobody saw or heard anything last night.

After a moment, Sanji muttered, “Asshole moss prolly slept during his shift.” This led to a tense argument which led to something far more violent.

“Anyways, we gotta get our meat back!” Luffy announced.

* * *

Sunny couldn't approach any closer to the island, and so they assigned an expedition crew (Luffy baby-sitting crew) to take the Mini Merry out – Franky, Brook, Usopp, and Chopper, who managed to fit on Usopp's lap comfortably. Then Nami assigned a Luffy baby-sitting crew baby-sitter (herself) and followed them on the waver, along with a bunch of surveying equipment that suggested the baby-sitters were going to do a bit more than baby-sitting.

Or perhaps not, as Luffy had managed to reach shore before either ship had and was already bouncing off into the distance with the typical amount of abandon expected of him. Nami's sharp voice chased after him, and then her waver – further behind, the rest of the baby-sitters, and behind that, the prayers of everybody else on the Sunny.

The beach itself was impressively drab, like dirt rather than sand. It gave a firmer foothold for anybody running on it, unfortunately. (“Luffy! Get back here! We're trying to _stick together!_ ”) Towards the center of the island, the beach turned into forested mountain, with nearly no transition so that that the trees rose like a sheer wall, clinging to the soil through the determination of nature. They were beautiful, majestic, (“I swear to god if you don't stop swinging around like a goddamn _monkey_ I'm gonna tie you up like a tetherball!”) a testament to the power of life. Climbing upwards, (“Luffy no, Luffy stop, Luffy _don't,”)_ the mountain crested over a valley surrounded on all sides, as though the land itself was encircling the valley below with a protective hug. From up here (“AAAAAA WE'RE FALLING WE'RE GONNA DIE” “OUR GUTS WILL BE SPLATTERED ON THE GROUND but since I don't have guts” “NOT HELPING. LUFFY, DO SOMETHING YOU IDIOT STOP LAUGHING”) you could see the whole island, a big, oblong pot with a dazzlingly clear lake at the bottom. And a little to the east of that, what could only be a settlement.

“Hellooooo!” Luffy called out after they had all tumbled into town. His salutation didn't echo, but sank into its grave instead, its only response a silent funeral. Empty windows watched them, wide with shock.

The houses were all made of rough rock, light and tan and all irregular bricks. It gave the appearance of a civilization older than mass production, but there was a warm color to the huts that felt more recent. The buildings were arranged –

“'Scuse me,” said Luffy, already in a house.

“DON'T JUST WALK IN!”

* * *

“...so basically, we didn't find what we were looking for,” Nami finished, after a long day of surveying the empty island.

“Huh? Yeah we did! Meat!” Luffy lifted his two-hundred pound bird that had been misled about who, exactly, was dinner. Somehow, the whole thing managed to fit in the dining room and leave enough space for the rest of them, but Chopper kept sneezing and Franky was pressed against the wall, struggling to stay still so that the down didn't brush against his apparently very ticklish skin. Sanji stared numbly at the mass of feathers and tried not to count how many he would have to pluck.

Nami hung her head and maybe would have slid down to the floor, if there had been room. “We were looking for the _thief.”_

“Oh. Yeah. Well, it's alright now.”

“ _Luffy..._ ”

“No, Nami-san, it really is fine,” Sanji interjected, even though it really wasn’t. Someone had _snuck on their ship._ Their _home._ And they were able to do this without being caught. Never mind the food, this was an issue of _safety._ But Sanji pretended, for a moment, that it was about the food. “We've got plenty of supplies, and it'll last for a while as long as _somebody_ eats a little less.”

Luffy looked up from chewing on a wing, attuned to any food-related threat. Sanji glared straight at him. He looked over his shoulder optimistically and jabbed a thumb towards Zoro with a question in his eyes. Sanji pointed back at him, emphatically. Luffy's face fell, and him along with it, right into the bird's fluff.

Sanji turned back to Nami and continued, “If someone needs to steal food, I'm fine with letting them go if they don't actually take much. Though, if they come _back..._ ”

“But, um...if they're stealing food...does that mean there are people in trouble here?” Chopper asked, trying to peer past the bird's tail that was covering most of the table.

“Not our problem. If they _really_ were in trouble, they could've just _asked_ us for a ride.”

“Or they could have slit all of our throats in our sleep and taken the ship.”

Nami cringed but remained steadfastly on point. “Exactly. People have already been living here, far as I can tell, and there are plenty of stuff to eat. Pretty sure I saw fields too. They just saw an easy target and took the chance. We'll be all set to leave in the morning, so let's just make sure the thief doesn't steal again and go on our way.”

Seemed simple enough, and everybody nodded in understanding, even Luffy, who always managed to comprehend anything related to the loss of meat.

“Anyways,” Sanji said evenly, still staring at the metaphorical elephant in the room, “why don't we have a barbeque outside?”

“ _Please,_ ” Franky wheezed from the wall.

* * *

Long after the fire died down, after the bones were packed up and the pirates packed in the ship, someone silently slipped out of the trees and descended on the beach. There was nothing but the sound of waves – not even as the someone pushed a boat into the ocean and jumped in. The nocturnal sailor must have been well-experienced with this current endeavor, as they could row their oars with minimal noise, toss a make-shift grappling hook over the side of the Sunny in one go, and climb up in the blink of an eye. But of course, this was already the second time they had boarded this particular ship.

The grass muffled their feet, which aimed unerringly towards the kitchen, then to the fridge. The previously impenetrable door opened with a hum and the light of a small bulb, which was quickly drowned out by the light of several other bulbs flicking on from the ceiling, flooding the room with light.

Sanji stood by the light switch, trying not to look like he had fallen asleep at the dining table. “Kid, don't you know never to return to the scene of the crime?”

It really was a kid, like he'd thought. If Sanji had still been sitting down, he wouldn't have been able to see them behind the counter. What he could currently see looked about as tense as Luffy whenever he got caught doing exactly this, as though Sanji's sight was based on movement, and if you just stayed very still…

– or maybe the kid had been contemplating an escape route. They went from zero to _fast_ in seconds, feet thundering towards the infirmary. The sudden acceleration caught Sanji off-guard, but only for a moment – he dashed forwards as well, only to run into the door when it slammed closed.

Once he recovered enough to get in and out the infirmary, still hot on the thief's heels given the advantage of his long legs, he shouted, “Hey! Sound the alarm!”

Something blared from the speakers in the crow's nest eventually, so whoever was on guard heard him at least. He didn't pay attention to the words, nor to the general commotion as the rest of the ship startled awake, just focused on the running kid in front of him, who was skipping the stairs entirely and jumping down, still speeding ahead, past the mast – no, shit _around_ the mast! Sanji tried to turn but ended up skidding, kicking up clods of dirt and probably staining his clothes _goddammit,_ but he pushed himself back up with a graceful flailing of his legs, the kid still hadn't gotten past the mast but he had lost so much time trying to find purchase on the grass there was no way he could get the speed up again and catch up, and then Usopp dropped from outta nowhere, probably had been the one on watch, and it was with a triumphant “Gotcha!” that Usopp clapped his hands on the kid's shoulders.

It was an impressive maneuver, or would have been, if not for pesky momentum. For the second time, Sanji found himself trying to wheel his legs backwards, stop all forward movement, and...actually _managed_ it, stopping just short of running into the two of them.

But it was while Usopp was distracted by not being crashed into and when Sanji was flailing his arms, trying to keep balance, that the kid grabbed hold of them both and, if Sanji had to guess, this was the part where it all went wrong.

It was hard to describe what actually happened. There was the sensation of spinning, or...a constant, disjointed movement that kept displacing him in a spot where he clearly _shouldn't_ be, but at the same time, he was standing still. The same scene kept flashing in front of his eyes, but from different angles, sometimes slightly different, sometimes completely, always enough to be disorienting.

And just when he was about ready to puke, it stopped, and he thudded against the mast in the effort to stay standing. There was another thud, probably Usopp falling, and some hurried splashing sounds – the kid making a getaway, no doubt. But thinking about these things made it harder for Sanji to focus on keeping things inside him so he just stopped thinking and stared at something fuzzy in front of his face.

Half of the crew ran for the side of the ship, seeking out what was already disappearing into the shadow of the night. The other half rushed for the two incapacitated.

“Symptoms!” Chopper demanded, apparently unable to formulate his worries into sentences. He squeezed in front of Sanji and supported him while the others crowded around the still-fallen Usopp.

“Sanji-kun, are you alright!?”

At that, Sanji couldn't help but make the effort to force out, “'m fine, Nami-san...” He even gunned for a smile to show just how fine he was, only to look up into Nami's really confused face.

“Did... _you_ just say...'Nami-san?'”

Eh?

Chopper tugged lightly at his arm. “Maybe you should sit down, Usopp.”

Eh?

Sanji felt a burst of panic even as a sense of deja vu came over him and maybe because it was so familiar, that's why he was panicking because it would mean the worst, and he lurched forward – even though his head felt like it had stayed behind – past Nami, pushed aside Brook, and stared down at Usopp, who was already groaning awake.

Except Usopp was looking a little more blond, more sharply-dressed, more _Sanji_ than usual.

Sanji screamed, then stopped when his voice didn't sound like what he was used to, then screamed again because Usopp's voice was really good at screaming.


	2. Chapter 2

“Welcome to the club,” Nami said, lightly setting a paper hat on Usopp's head with a solemn face and stepping back with a grandiose gesture. “The Swapped Into Sanji's Body Club.”

Usopp sat at the table, back completely stiff, knees locked together, looking as completely un-Sanji as he possibly could. The only other member of the club, Chopper, applauded his crowning.

“Why do we even have enough people for a _club,_ ” Usopp muttered to nobody in particular, trying to brush the hair that wasn't his out of the eye that also wasn't his. It kept falling back in place, either out of habit or out of some mysterious hair-styling method that Sanji kept secret. “This is a thing that shouldn't even happen more than _once._ ”

Chopper and Nami could only shrug, and the latter swung her arm around his shoulders. Across the room in the kitchen, Usopp could see himself suddenly shoot him a glare he wasn't aware his face was capable of, and hoped that he wasn't about to kill himself. “We'll all probably get a turn in there honestly, at the rate this is going.”

“I'd die,” Zoro said flatly, his nose flaring in disgust.

“Then we could found a Dead Club together!”

“But you're already the Swords Club,” Luffy said, somehow perching on his chair and balancing it on two legs at the same time.

Usopp interrupted this riveting conversation by clearing his throat so loudly that he might have upended his entire throat. This quickly evolved into a cough, and then a hack that propelled his face onto the tabletop. “I already feel like I'm dying,” he said. “My throat hurts...my head hurts...I think...Sanji's body is killing me…”

“It's six AM,” Sanji explained. “You should've smoked about twelve cigarettes by now. They're in my pocket.”

“I'm _not_ gonna intentionally sabotage these lungs! I'm already having a hard time breathing!”

“Then gimme one.”

“ _YOU'RE NOT SABOTAGING MY LUNGS EITHER!”_

Sanji turned away from Usopp (who was now struggling with a wet cough that almost sounded like wet vomit) and back to the people in his kitchen, doctoring his fridge.

Franky kept closing and opening it, his face squinting more and more every time. Occasionally, he would tap the keypad, unscrew a panel, examine wires, and squint even harder. Robin was here as well, observing, though she couldn't be much help. Not that Sanji was complaining. Not that he really had a right to complain. He was probably less helpful, testily asking what was wrong with his baby and grinding his toes into the back of Franky's head whenever he said, “I dunno.”

Eventually, Sanji got tired of harassing Franky and started bustling around to make breakfast. Might as well, since everybody was up already. He spread a variety of vegetables out on his cutting board and picked up the knife.

Put it down.

Picked it up again, holding it differently.

Put it down.

“I just don't _get_ it,” Franky hissed out, giving voice to Sanji's own thoughts. Though, if he thought about it, he _did_ get it, because even if Usopp's hands were well-callused with work, they didn't have any of the _right_ calluses. And, now that he was stopping to think about how _wrong_ everything was, there was the _hair,_ like he was wearing an itchy cloud on his head that brushed up against the back of his neck, not to mention that he _couldn't stop seeing his own nose._ It stretched out in front, cutting the cutting board in half, no matter where he turned his head it was there, and even if he averted his eyes, it blurred at the very edge of his vision, a constant _distraction_ that he wanted _gone_ and Sanji had to put the knife down again.

Maybe he should make something that didn't require holding sharp objects.

Sanji pivoted stiffly and reached for his drawer of miscellaneous tools. He tugged. It didn't open.

“The lock isn't jammed...wires ain't tangled…”

He wiggled it until it rattled, tried pulling from different angles, outright braced his foot against it and leaned back with all his weight and holy _shit_ Usopp wasn't _this_ weak, he was pretty damn sure!

“It just _says_ it's locked, but it's not!”

Sanji braced his other foot, and this was getting ridiculous.

“Perhaps something will happen if I enter the code?”

Franky made a sound like the hissing of cola about to explode before moving aside for Robin to input the password.

A second later, Sanji flew violently across the kitchen and slammed into the counter behind him, a very open drawer in his hand. Various cooking implements started to clatter on just about every surface, and none of them were knives, thank goodness for that.

He felt everybody's eyes on him, or maybe that was the beginnings of a concussion.

“So,” Sanji said, his voice cracking in ways he wasn't used to, “I think I know what's wrong with the fridge.”

* * *

“Still empty,” Nami observed with some disappointment when they entered (tumbled into) the village again. Even when Luffy didn't _intentionally_ bowl them over the lip of the mountain, the way down was too steep to reasonably keep balance – and so pretty much everybody ended up tripping and rolling down anyways.

Sanji took the chance to look around while brushing the entire forest off of himself. The village looked about as...home-made as he imagined, from its description. There were paths around to every hut, but they were made by the eventual wear and tear of people walking them rather than any planned infrastructure. Standing in the middle of the cul-de-sac, Sanji squinted back up at the lip of the mountains. Then he tried tilting his head down and eyes up at the lip of the mountains. Then he tried looking askance at the lip of the mountains.

“What the heck're you doing, bro.”

“ _Shut up,_ ” Sanji hissed back, wishing he could look straight at people without having to see The Nose.

“Ah, I understand Sanji-san's actions perfectly...why, if _I_ still had eyes, I would absolutely enjoy the sensation of rolling them about.”

“'Scuse me, Nami-san? We came from that direction, right?”

“Hm? Yeah.”

“Ah...ignored...as though I were just bones...”

As Brook acted out an entire comedy routine behind them, Sanji continued, “I think if you were standing down here...you could've seen us coming. There's only shrubs up there. You could at least notice someone moving.”

Nami shaded her eyes and looked where Sanji('s nose) was pointing. Usopp, who had been listening in, pulled down his goggles. “Yeah, looks like it.”

“So...you think the people living here are still watching us?” Nami added, turning back to look at Sanji only to find that he had shot towards Usopp and was now engaging in a wrestling match over the goggles.

“Off, _off!_ _Right now!_ ”

“Well, _you_ didn't wanna wear them, so I might as well! They're useful!”

“You have a _responsibility_ to _not_ make me look like an idiot – “

“ – not like you need help with _that –_ “

“So the goggles come off _now_ and _stop messing with my hair!_ ”

“I need to see!”

“Use your Observation Haki!”

“I _just_ got it, I don't know how to freaking _use it!_ ”

Usopp had managed to make use of his new advantage, his legs, and was holding back Sanji with one of them, but had not thought about balance and so when Sanji made a sudden lunge, the two of them toppled over and continued grappling on the ground.

At least until Usopp seemed to curl up, shaking with gasping breaths. “Ah, ah...s-stop, I can't…”

Sanji jumped back to his feet, and it was one thing to experience asphyxiation, but quite another to _watch_ himself experience it, his red face, his hoarse wheezing, his _vulnerability,_ he could die, he could die and at the same time live the rest of his days as someone else, and then Usopp jumped upright, snapped the goggles over his eyes, stuck his tongue out, and then ran away.

Sanji stood there for about three seconds before screaming out, “ _YOU ASSHOLE SON OF A SHIT”_ and sprinting after a shrieking Usopp all around the huts.

“They _really_ can't deal with being each other,” Nami said, rubbing her forehead with the heel of her palm. “I feel like I should hit Usopp for that. _Should_ I hit Usopp for that?”

“Perhaps it would be better to wait when he is in his own body to be hit,” Robin suggested, her eyes glinting as she watched the two trip over legs that did not belong to them and immediately hit the ground again.

Luffy came barreling out of a house he had intruded into, waving around a rather thin bag like a flail. “Food! I found our food! Sanji, Sanji, look!” He bounded over to where Usopp was lying, came to a full stop, looked lost for a moment, and then ran full speed to where Sanji was. Luffy's shouting attracted the rest of the crew to his spot, where he sat on Sanji like an overly excitable dog and waved the bag under his nose until Sanji had enough and just shoved him off. Luffy rolled onto his back, beamed up at the circle of people around him, and held the bag aloft like a trophy.

“How d'ya know it's ours?” Franky asked.

“Smells Sunny-like.”

“That's not a smell,” Chopper informed the rest.

Nami strode over and plucked the bag out of Luffy's grasp. “You can't just take stuff out of someone's house and say it's yours! Besides, we lost a _lot_ more than just this,” she added, swinging her arm up and down to show how light the bag was. It bounced like a water yo-yo. Sanji sat up and pulled his lips into a grimace as he watched the bag dance, his hands twitching out a morse code of distress.

“This particular bag is probably from this morning, no?” Robin suggested, turning to Sanji.

“Yeah. We chased that kid off, but they still could grab stuff. I think we had some butter and turnips missing.”

Nami peered into the bag and her face went woefully blank. After a few seconds, Zoro looked over her shoulder.

“Well, we got buttered turnips back.”

“God _dammit_ , marimo.”

“What?! I wasn't the one swinging the damn bag around!”

“ _Hah?!_ You blaming Nami-san for this then?!”

“Guys guys guys _guys,_ _please_ don't fight, you're gonna kill my body – “

“ _You wanna start something?”_ Zoro snarled, his sword already out and pointed at Usopp, who responded by shrieking and pedaling backwards into a wall. Zoro stood there, sword outstretched looking equally parts baffled and disappointed. Sanji looked like his face wanted to turn red, but didn't have the right skin tone for that at the moment.

“Well,” Brook said, voice hovering lightly in the silence, “that certainly was bizarre.”

“Anyways, we know the thief's at least been here. Let's split up and find them. Zoro, you're with me.”

Zoro jerked his head up from resheathing his sword. “Eh? Why do _you_ get to choose?!”

“It's _really_ for the best.”

“She's saying that her navigational skills just _might_ cancel out your broken compass for a head.”

“And _who's_ the one so lost he's not even in his own body?”

“C'mon, bros, lay off just this once,” Franky grumbled.

But no, they couldn't, and Sanji rose a foot in the air, quickly started to wobble, and slammed the foot back down before he could properly fall over. Zoro's cheeks puffed with a repressed laugh.

It was through sheer determination that Sanji stretched Usopp's legs in angles they should not have been able to make and kicked Zoro in the face without falling over. It didn't knock Zoro down. Actually, it might have done negative damage, in that Sanji was sure that he might have damaged something.

“It's a sprained ankle,” said Chopper after a quick check-up, sounding accusatory.

“SANJI WHY.”

Sanji at least had the decency to look embarrassed. “Whoops.”

“He can still walk, at least, but you should probably rest every once in a while.”

“And that's exactly why Sanji-kun isn't going with Zoro,” Nami said flatly, arms akimbo. “Let's just finish splitting up before someone _else_ gets injured.”

In the end, Sanji and Usopp were stuck together, “to make sure nothing like last time happens,” as Nami put it. Chopper volunteered to go with them and keep an eye on Sanji's ankle. Usopp's ankle. Whatever. Luffy volunteered as well, “because it'll be funny.”

“I suppose that leaves us old bones to group together,” Brook said, throwing his lanky arms around Franky and Robin.

“Woah, don't lump me in with you! I'm only in my thirties! _Thirties!_ ”

“Ah, yes...I remember when I was in my thirties. That was the first time I died.”

“You were as old as Franky is now, weren't you?” Robin added, in the manner of commenting on a work of art.

“Why yes, I believe so! Yohohohoho!”

“What's with this foreboding crap you guys're spewing 'bout me?!”

And with that lively conversation, the crew split up with a promise to meet back at the empty village in a few hours.

* * *

Although Luffy had said he wanted to stick around Sanji and Usopp, he was constantly running ahead after who knows what, only occasionally remembering to bound back. It ought to be expected, really. He was like a dog, with significantly less hair and an even shorter attention span.

Sanji had opted to carry the bag that Luffy had found. Thinking about the fate of the butter and turnips (buttered turnips) stabbed something bitter through his ribs, but he was hellbent on figuring out a way to salvage them. Once Chopper sniffed at it, seeing if he could catch someone's scent and follow the trail.

“It smells like everything that's ever been in there,” Chopper huffed out, wiping his nose. “I'm not sure this was ever _washed._ It's gonna be hard to single out one scent.”

Sanji considered giving up on the buttered turnips.

“Hey! Hey Usopp!” Luffy called out, and Sanji turned just in time to have a giant, wriggling, _alive_ beetle flourished in his face.

Luffy scrunched his face when Sanji shrieked and jumped back several feet, before his expression cleared and he turned to face Usopp. “Look!”

“Oh, sweet, that's a – “

“If you touch that with my _bare hands_ I'm gonna dig my shoe _so_ far into your spine that your brain stem will feel it _last week._ ”

Usopp's fingers stopped mere centimeters from the disgusting exoskeleton. “I can wash my – your hands afterwards!”

“ _NO!_ No touching bugs! That's another rule!”

“You sure've been giving me a lot of rules...” Usopp muttered as Luffy tossed the beetle away, looking deeply disappointed.

But that didn't last long. “Hey, Sanji, what's the weirdest thing about Usopp?”

“His dick is shaped like a nose,” Sanji replied without pause.

As Luffy laughed so hard that he bowled himself over, Usopp snapped, “Don't just make things up about me!”

“Usopp, what's the weirdest thing about Sanji?”

“His dick's curly.”

Okay, maybe he should've expected that.

Luffy laughed even harder, if that was possible, and Sanji limped over to Usopp, leaned in close, found that his nose was jabbing Usopp in the chin, leaned back a little. “How about we stop wasting time and find that kid already, hm?”

“ _You're_ the one who took so long to change clothes. You could've just kept what I had on, but _nooooo._ ”

Sanji flushed, or at least felt like he did, remembering how he had ran to the cabin and started to slip off the goddamn hokey overalls, only to pause down his waist with the sudden realization that Usopp was not in the habit of wearing a certain garment underneath, and continuing now would be crossing a threshold that Sanji absolutely didn't want to, and so he was stuck deliberating on this dilemma for a significant amount of time.

“You didn't even really _change,_ ” Usopp continued, gesturing his hands at Sanji's everything.

“I put on a shirt.”

This did not seem to impress Usopp, who was traitorously using Sanji's own deadpan expression against him, the one that he had cultivated through years of dealing with bullshit and which was now telling him that he was the one currently doing the bullshit.

“I'm just saying, I've been letting you do _whatever,_ y'know, whatever makes you comfortable, but you've been fussing over me non-stop! You wouldn't even let me choose out my clothes!”

“I let you forget the tie,” Sanji returned, but the bullshit stare just stared harder. Sanji almost wanted to punch it off.

“Oh, yeah, that was _super_ generous of you, after going through about fifteen other outfits and saying they were,” and here Usopp pitched his voice into some sort of dramatic snob as he flicked his hair and turned his nose upwards, “ _completely unacceptable._ ”

After a whole day of watching himself act _wrong,_ seeing his own body mock him was too much. Sanji raised an arm.

“Guys, don't fight!” Chopper shouted, squeezing between them, although his hurt voice could have been force enough. His watery expression alone could have stopped wars. Sanji awkwardly changed the trajectory of his arm to behind his head. Usopp looked down at his feet.

“Ah...no, sorry, we weren't...”

“I've just been a bit grumpy,” Usopp tried, quirking a smile.

“Smoking makes me feel better,” Sanji reminded, earning a quick glare from Usopp but nothing more.

“Well, that's still too much! Maybe you're uncomfortable, but that's no reason to take it out on each other!”

Sanji and Usopp bowed their heads, feeling like the nature of the world was being overturned. “Sorry...”

“Don't apologize to _me._ ”

Sanji glanced at Usopp at the same time that Usopp glanced at Sanji, and their eyes met and instantly turned away. Sanji mumbled something vaguely contrite at a tree. Usopp replied in a similar manner, but at his feet. Below them, Chopper made a sound like a very disapproving kettle, but didn't push the subject, mostly because Luffy had suddenly shot up.

“There! Look!”

Before anybody could say 'Where?' or even look at what Luffy was pointing at, he was off, leaping into the shrubbery, shouting for everybody to follow him even as he somehow instantly sunk under the green and disappeared.

“L-Luffy! Wait!” Chopper bounded once, shifted down to all fours, and trampled after the captain. Sanji and Usopp both moved to run after them and immediately both landed on their respective faces.

The noises of rustling forest and disturbed birds faded away soon after. The two of them continued to lie there, taking stock of their lives from birth to here, and where the hell they went wrong.

“Your legs are too short,” Sanji commented, raising his head so that at least his sizable nose wasn't digging a sizable hole in the ground.

“Yours,” Usopp countered solemnly, trying to blow the hair out of his eye, “are too _long._ ”

* * *

“Eureka! Zoro, come quick!”

Zoro aborted his yawn with a click of his jaw and squinted ahead of him. “You found the kid?”

Nami raised a lantern, its light flickering against the cave walls. Rather than illuminating the tunnel they were in it simply shifted the shadows around, walls of darkness shutting off one part of the cave and opening up another. She might have raised it to show him something, but all he could see was her face, which lit up with its own light source as she pointed out her discovery.

“ _Gemstones!”_ she declared proudly, and now that he was looking, the walls _did_ glitter in that way that valuable things did. He stared at the walls for a moment, and then stared at the only other thing that was sparkling in his general vicinity. Nami, in response, traced the gems in the walls. “Could it be diamonds? Maybe diamonds! Oh, but if there's obsidian, that's not bad! There must be so _much_ here, untouched, waiting for _me...”_

“There's a lot here,” Zoro commented, not actually looking at any of the gems (which really meant nothing to him, like weren't they mostly different colored rocks?) but at Nami, who was the one who had the idea of going into the cave in the first place. And, before that, the idea of picking up a spare pick-ax from the village. As well as the lantern. “Awfully convenient.”

“Well, this is a volcanic island, you see – there's the caldera and everything. And with volcanic islands come fertile soil and _valuable_ gemstones~” Nami sang, leaning her borrowed pick-ax on the ground and gazing at the walls with the sort of look that Zoro saw Luffy wear around food and the damn cook wear around women.

“We aren't here to look for _rocks,_ ” Zoro said, and Nami flinched at the meaning of the tone.

“Hey, c'mon! There's obviously mining going on, so maybe the kid's here! I didn't _just_ come to get some jewels, of course not, but, y'know, given the opportunity...”

Nami's philosophy, as far as Zoro could tell, was that it was never a waste of time to earn a profit, no matter the situation. It was a quirk of her personality or a real pain in the ass depending on the situation and how charitable he was feeling towards her, but he supposed that the kid _could_ be here. He'd just had to pay closer attention to pick up her slack.

Which was damn annoying and he wasn't about to let her forget it. “Are you just physically incapable of focusing whenever some damn _treasure_ 's in the picture? At least prioritize _people._ ”

With a pout, Nami replied, “I'm not _not_ thinking about them, but there's no point in ignoring _gems_. Look, we've got other people looking, this island isn't super big, the kid can't leave on a boat...what's the worst that can happen?” And, shooting him a smile in the shadows, she handed him the pick-ax. “Anyways, get to work!”

“ _I'M_ THE ONE MINING?!”

* * *

As a reindeer, Chopper prided himself on being fleet of foot. But that was only within the context of a certain environment with a certain climate, that is, snow. As sprightly as his legs were, they were used to prancing through snow, not dealing with undergrowth, thick green things that kept doing things like cracking or tangling or tripping, rather than things that snow did, which was generally get trampled. Still, he was gamely imagining that he was just running through green snow, and somehow that was enough to allow him to...well, not keep _pace_ with Luffy...but at least keep Luffy in sight. Though even if Luffy wasn't in sight, he would always be in hearing, considering the way he was running with no concern of little things like ferns and trees and sometimes boulders, shouting at someone to “COME BACK” while the someone was, judging by the screams that sometimes drifted above his shouts, very unwilling to obey.

At this point, they were starting to skirt the boundaries of the valley, almost hugging the enclosing cliffs. Luffy was starting to lose patience, judging by the way he kept throwing an arm out and inadvertently bouncing it off the surrounding trees, which had the effect of not at all capturing the refugee, but definitely scaring the shit out of whoever it was and speeding them up. As fast as Luffy was and as adept as his powers were at grabbing people, he didn't quite seem to be doing so well with things like _vegetation_ in the way. It might be time for tactics.

Trying to ignore the way his sides were starting to heave, Chopper started to move into a gallop, closer to the cliff wall... _up_ the cliff wall, don't think about it, don't think, thinking makes it more likely for gravity to catch on, past Luffy, past trees, past a small figure...and then _jump…_

Miracle of miracles, Chopper skidded right in front of the person that Luffy had chased after, causing them to careen to a stop to avoid an untimely crash. And then, Luffy had his arms around them.

“Lemme go, lemme go! I'm not doin' nothin'!” The kid said, for it was definitely a kid, now that she had stop being a motion blur long enough for Chopper to examine her. Her declaration of innocence was blatantly false as she was most certainly doin' somethin', kicking and wrenching her shoulders this way and that, but now that Luffy had her all wrapped up in his embrace, there was really no escaping. She had to pause to take a breather before resuming her futile struggles.

Chopper morphed back to his more compact form and dodged some of their captive's errant kicks. “Please, calm down! We're not gonna hurt you or anything,” he said, ducking down. His disarmingly sweet voice might have lent a convincing flavor to what he said, for the girl did stop kicking and screaming to at least say, hopeful tears spilling over, “S-so y' aren't angry about th' food…?”

Ah, the thief. Chopper straightened up to assure her that no, of course not, but looking at her face, he had to do a double take. Then a triple take. In the end, the only thing that came out of his mouth was a very subdued, “Ah,” as he pointed, mouth open.

“Um,” said the thief, leaning a bit backwards from Chopper's hoof, her eyebrows scrunching.

“What's up, Chopper?” Luffy craned his neck to look down at the doctor, then stretched it to follow his line of sight and as he took in the thief's face, his mouth slowly grew into a smile so wide it reached his eyes, because what else could he do when beholding what could only be a joke by the universe? And he didn't laugh just yet, but only because he wanted to repeat the joke himself.

“Swirly,” he managed, before doubling backwards for one of the patented Luffy Laughs, the one that took his whole body to do, which left the unfortunate thief rolling on the ground along with him, blurting out confused protests whenever she could.

And really, that was all that needed to be said, because through all of their travels in all of the oceans, on land and on sea and in air, even when they had encountered imposters and look-alikes, they had _never_ seen someone with eyebrows curled _the same way._

And here it was, as plain as the, er, eyebrows on her face.

It had to be some miracle, Chopper decided, or Sanji had a kid without them knowing. A kid seven years ago. When he was twelve. In the East Blue.

But, putting aside the eyebrows, she really didn't look at all like Sanji. Crooked front teeth. Golden hazel eyes. Unruly, copper hair. Skin that reminded him of deserts rather than snow. It was just...the _eyebrows…_

Luffy, just about laughed out, sat up and held the kid aloft. “Sanji! Sanji!! You gotta see this!”

Sanji did not answer, mostly because he was not there. Neither was Usopp, and now that Chopper was distinctly aware of this fact, it started to dawn on him that maybe they had possibly kinda Screwed Up.

Luffy, with the child still wrapped up in the coils of his arms, glanced around the trees and pulled his lips taut with a faintly disapproving, “Hm.”

* * *

It wasn't _that_ bad, being him.

This was Usopp's own personal opinion, and perhaps that opinion was biased, but, objectively speaking, it wasn't _bad,_ as far as he experienced. He was well-fed, young, reasonably healthy, had abs ( _abs!!!!),_ quite good-looking, abs, he couldn't emphasize the abs enough, he worked his _ass_ off for those abs, you could play a whole _drum solo_ on those abs.

So, not gonna lie, it was a _bit_ discouraging to see Sanji being him, the way he was just walking around, constantly frowning, occasionally grabbing his own nose and letting out a beleaguered sigh, never relaxing. Maybe a _lot_ disappointing. (Maybe even, dare he say it, _infuriating,_ but maybe that was the nicotine withdrawal, and hey, that was one of _many_ things that was really good about being him, _not being addicted on drugs_ but no, he wasn't Sanji (technically), he wasn't going to blow up over something as temporary as this, he was the better man here, the _reasonable_ one, the one not constantly freaking out about these little things and if Sanji hated being him so freaking much, didn't he realize it was kinda _sorta_ the same as hating _him?_ Because _he_ was the one with the nose and the hair and all that _stuff_ so what did that mean for their interpersonal relationship and anyways where was he going with this?)

To reiterate: there were worse things than being him. Such as, and he _really_ hoped that Sanji was in agreement here, being surrounded by a bunch of natives with pick-axes and shovels, no back-up, one sprained ankle between them, and a whole lotta tension in the air.

Granted, the surrounding group had maybe about two well-toned men, the rest mostly being (what was the polite term?) _mature_ women. But frankly, any grandma that could haul around a pick-ax in the forest was a grandma to be reasonably threatened by.

Still, Sanji stepped up with a light look on his face and oh no, oh _no,_ please don't.

“Madams,” Sanji began, despite all the screaming in Usopp's head. He bowed, _actually bowed,_ and stared kindly at the ones in front with one of those smiles only reserved for madams and _crap_ it kinda looked cool but _also_ this was _super embarrassing,_ “May we assist you with anything?”

Well, if anything, it at least caught the pick-ax-wielding mob off-guard. Usopp found himself not really knowing where to look, besides _not at Sanji_ and so he tried resting his face in his hand in various casual poses, unable to figure out which one was optimal. Eventually, one of the women, kinda dumpy, but in the way that came with being fifty and maybe having a few kids like how the grocery lady back home was, but this one had a weathered face that would never be at home in a quiet village, anyways, she spoke up with the authority of a representative and said, “You pirates could leave.”

“Madam,” said Sanji, and _wow_ how the _hell_ did he make his voice go that _deep,_ “I assure you we will – we do not intend to cause trouble, especially not trouble for such respectable ladies as yourselves. Unfortunately, we currently have some business here, as a resident of this island had stolen some of our supplies and also – “

The entire mob bristled as one, somewhat like a porcupine if porcupines were shaped like donuts. The woman with the weathered face looked like an incoming storm and her voice went deep, not deep like Sanji's but a different sort of deep, and she said, “You will not harm her.”

It was Sanij's turn to be flustered and though he still smiled, it was going a bit strained as he was starting to see the donut-porcupine too. “No, no, you misunderstand, I didn't mean – “

“You can gather your friends and leave, or we will _force_ you to leave – “

Usopp stepped in front of Sanji. He wasn't sure why, but his mouth seemed pretty sure because it was already running. “Fools!” he started, and winced because Sanji's voice, _not_ exactly his typical storyteller kind of voice, but he couldn't stop now. “Do you not know who you are speaking to?! Look closely at his face, the face of the terror of the seas! The tamer of giants! Savior of islands! His very name inspires fear in the Seven Warlords themselves! He can fire a hundred shots in one second! He can see clear across this very island! When he was born, God himself tried to strike him down, but not even divine intervention could kill him! His exploits have earned him a two hundred million bounty on his head! This man before you is…God Usopp!!”

Silence followed what was a stunningly delivered epithet, if he did say so himself, and as he knelt and flourished his hands towards Sanji (thankfully rendered mute from what was either awe at his own wordsmithing skill or just plain bewildered), he had to metaphorically pat himself on the back for getting them out of _that_ one through the usual combination of ingenuity and grace and the good ol' quick thinker.

Finally, one of the younger women reacted, raised an arm to point, opened her mouth.

“That's Sanji!” she said, eager.

Usopp's smile froze on his face.

Well. Crap.


	3. Chapter 3

“Annalie,” the eyebrow girl answered, and she might have given a handshake if her hands currently weren't tied up in rubber. She didn't exactly look too trusting of them, not yet, which made her furrow her brows, which made Chopper stare at them more because _how._

“Chopper,” he answered to be polite.

“And I'm Luffy!”

The three of them were sitting down in the middle of the wild undergrowth, somewhat like a friendly picnic. If picnics regularly included prisoners. Was Annalie a prisoner? Chopper supposed so, considering that they were preventing her from moving freely. She was sat on Luffy's lap but not looking particularly uncomfortable. Chopper coughed. “So...um, weird question...but do you know a guy named Sanji?”

Annalie's brow scrunched up more. So that was a no.

“You gotta see Sanji though,” Luffy started, leaning his head on Annalie's shoulder with a smile that matched his poster. “He's really funny, and he makes _amazing_ food, and he's got eyebrows like you! Well, maybe he doesn't right now,” he added, “but usually he does. And he's not angry at you for stealing food, I think, so I'm not angry either, but that still wasn't nice. Anyways you did a thing!”

Luffy looked like he was expecting an answer, but Annalie just stared back and now her eyebrows practically looked like they would just tangle up in themselves, though that was a typical reaction to Luffy. Chopper stepped in. “You were the one who snuck on our ship twice, right? You took some food?”

Annalie pulled her legs closer to herself and looked shiftily at the ground, clamping her mouth shut.

Chopper really hoped that she wasn't their prisoner because frankly, he wasn't sure if he was up for the job. His heart wrenched itself as he looked down at Annalie, and he unshouldered his backpack and rummaged through it.

“You're not in trouble, it's okay,” he said, holding out a piece of hard candy.

Annalie flicked her eyes from the peace offering to the peace offerer. “What's that?”

“It's just candy.”

“...What's that,” she repeated, but in an entirely different way, and now Chopper _really_ knew he wasn't in the business of keeping prisoners because this was the saddest thing he had ever heard.

“It tastes good,” he said, holding it out but remembering how Annalie's arms were currently unusable, he unwrapped the candy himself and gently put it to her mouth. The face she made as soon as the sweet hit her tongue was heartbreakingly adorable, the very definition of a wonderful surprise, and she smiled and clicked the candy against her teeth.

Luffy butted in. “Hey! I want one too!” And Chopper obliged, and why not make it a candy party? All three of them sat for a moment, basking in the glory of sugared goods.

“So,” Chopper continued, rolling a strawberry-flavored lollipop to one cheek, “did you steal our food?”

Annalie hadn't quite gotten the hang of talking with her mouth full, and just nodded instead.

“So that means that you...uh, kinda switched our friends' bodies.”

With a loud crunch that possibly ruined her teeth even more, Annalie replied, “Oh. Um, I guess. I just wanted t' confuse them so they'd leggo me.”

Well, they were certainly _confused._

Before Chopper could continue his delicate diplomacy, Luffy jumped in again with his own brand of babble. “Hey, hey, so how'd you do that? The switchy thing. Oh, and the fridge thing, 'cause I've tried to open that before and it's _impossible,_ and it sucks 'cause I wanna eat but then Sanji gets angry, though actually, I guess I've seen this happen before, with Tra-guy but you can't actually do what he's doing because he's doing the devil fruit and there's only one so you're not using that so what are you using?”

Chopper didn't even bother to wait and see Annalie's reaction. “You're a devil fruit user, right?”

“Oh, yeah! 'S the Trade Trade fruit! I can trade stuff for other stuff. Like, ages! Or strength or whatever.” That was...not the _oddest_ power that they've encountered, not by a long shot. But it was certainly _flexible,_ wasn't it? “It's cool, but Ma says I gotta be careful 'cause I could hurt myself. One time, um, I was cold and I traded with a fire for hot, but then that was too hot! An’ I got all burned up. But I'm all better now. So, yeah.”

“So that's how Sanji and Usopp got swapped, and the fridge lock and drawer too,” Chopper mused, digging out a gummy this time and feeding the two in front of him. Annalie's eyes sparked at the different texture and kicked her legs with an exaggerated squeal.

“It sounds awesome!” Luffy declared. “I wanna see you do something!”

“I think first we should find Usopp and Sanji again...maybe they went back to the village. Could you switch everything back to normal, Annalie?”

“Mm-hm, okay!” she replied with a crooked smile stained with candy dyes. Above her, Luffy shot a matching grin and stood up, swinging her in his odd grip. Apparently, the two forgot that she was captured. Or, well, she probably wasn't anymore, Chopper thought as he watched Luffy swing his arms harder, eliciting a pleasant shriek from Annalie as she bounced like a water yo-yo. What a relief.

“Oh!” she said suddenly, twisting around. “Um, the, the thing I ate, uh...don't tell Ma that I did?”

“It's a secret,” Chopper agreed, solemnly crossing his heart.

* * *

“There it is, the path.”

It took traversing the entire opposite side of the island, but Brook, Robin and Franky found something worth investigating. Or rather, Brook and Robin did, using their various powers to make the search super efficient. Franky mostly carried Brook's soulless body and tried to keep up without knocking down too many trees. It was Robin who caught sight of it first and Brook who confirmed it: a hole straight through the mountain, leading to the beach.

Well, 'hole' was perhaps describing it too simply. There was a carved arch at the entrance, leading into a smooth tunnel that was dimly lit by phosphorescent moss. The other side had another carved arch, one more ornately decorated with set stones, polished to perfection, though they couldn't reflect light with the sun on the other side of the island.

“It's not terribly ancient,” Robin explained, running her hands over the masonry, “but it is at least some decades old.”

“Y'know if it's important or somethin'?” Franky asked, appraising it himself with a craftman's eye.

“There's not much to say about it. Though I wonder about the engravings along the top...”

Franky backed up and craned his neck. Among the tastefully arranged jewels, there was a symbol that stood out. It took up the center, meaning it was meant to be seen, but he couldn't say that it meant anything to him. But if Robin found it significant, then it likely was, and so he simply stared harder. A circle, and four small triangles; three on the top, one on the bottom...like a claw, he supposed…

“That is the mark of the celestial dragons,” said Robin, and Franky made an instinctual noise of disgust. “I believe they put it on anything they own.”

“So what, this is their island? We trespassing on some celestial shit's vacation spot or somethin'?”

“I find it hard to imagine any one of their ilk would willingly choose to reside here...it is rather, ah, what is the polite term?” Brook clacked a finger against his jaw. “A shithole.”

“You didn't even try...”

“Whatever the situation, it doesn't bode well. I believe that's a ship on the horizon, there.”

The two men followed the trajectory of Robin's finger, and there indeed was a ship at the end of it, a significant blotch in the distance, getting closer. It wasn't quite close enough to scrutinize the color of its flag, but given what they had just concluded, its presence only served to fill the air with tension.

“The others ought to know about this,” Robin said, voicing what had been playing in her companions' heads, and all three turned back only to pause at the arch of the cave because, adding a bit more tension, they heard voices coming their way.

* * *

“What're you gonna do with him?”

The man that held Usopp by his restraints glanced at him oddly. Or, not oddly, reasonably. Because after getting surrounded, captured, tied up, separated, with Sanji staying back at the village and Usopp being taken who knows where, being led in a silent procession of various women with baskets and worn-out faces, and he asks about the _other_ guy?

To be fair, Usopp had many concerns, was someone who always had concerns, an entire list of concerns for every occasion. It was just that, somehow, his own situation wasn't at the top of that list. A bizarre sensation, to be sure, as if he thought that because it wasn't technically _his_ arms that were tied or _his_ body being dragged to an unknown fate, there was no reason to worry. Or perhaps the fact that he was, in a way, Sanji, cool, unflappable, sometimes an idiot but still super strong Sanji, it was hard for him to come up with all the ways things could go really bad for him like he usually did. Like...he couldn't kick like Sanji, couldn't even run properly...but what was the worst that could happen? Sanji, on the other hand, was Usopp, the oh-so fragile Usopp, and already sprained his own ankle for god's sake. Usopp knew how hopeless Sanji was right now because he knew exactly how hopeless _he_ was and Sanji was that hopeless and more. And so in the end his question was, what're they gonna do with him?

The man pinched the bridge of his nose and looked ahead. “Nothing. We don't really... _need_ him, so...”

Well, that was a relief. Or, was it a relief? 'Nothing' as in they would let him go, or 'nothing' in that they would abandon him to starve or something? Or were they lying? They could be lying. They were literally leading him through a forest like a prisoner and being rather cagey about the whole thing, so there was absolutely no reason for him to trust these people about _anything_ and what was even happening here anyways? Why did these people recognize Sanji and not _him_ (or...recognize him and not Sanji?) and what was even up with this reaction? Wasn't the usual modus operandi for regular villagers 'run away' instead of 'try and capture some really dangerous criminals,' like how come they even thought they could _capture_ him? And sure, okay, they _could_ but only because of the current extenuating circumstances. In a normal situation, these village nobodies would have been absolutely _slaughtered_ (well, metaphorically, since Sanji would have absolutely not allowed any of the women to be touched and Usopp wasn't a slaughtering kind of guy in the first place).

Honestly, the more he was thinking about this the more he was kinda freaking out, like _holy shit_ he was in trouble. Like, potentially walking into a human sacrifice trouble, captured by a cannibalism cult trouble (wouldn't put it past these ladies, no matter how rickety some of them were) and he really needed to do something, right? Like escaping? About now? Somehow, anyhow. There was a cave coming up. Could he get away there? Wrench out of the man's grip and run away in the confusion – though the problem was he already had enough trouble balancing himself normally at the moment, and now his arms were freaking _tied_ so any attempts at running would probably just look worse than drunk. But still, there was a chance, wasn't there, if he could somehow hide himself in a corner, and then – the sun hit Usopp straight in the eye, informing him that they had all just exited the cave. Oh.

The procession halted along the shore and one of the women peered at the ocean ahead and said, “They'll be here soon.”

There was a lack of stakes and bonfires and giant boiling pots, so Usopp relaxed a little in that regard. But, anchored out at sea was what could only be a warship, judging by the size. And, a bit hard to see (if only he had his goggles on), but speckled out in front of it were a fleet of smaller ships gliding over the coral, like, literally _gliding,_ through the waves, in a straight trajectory that just couldn't be associated with rowboats, with a speed that couldn't be associated with rowers, and Usopp blinked once and the fleet were at the beach instantly, braking so hard he could hear the air whine in protest. It seemed just as surprising to most of the passengers as it did to him, as they were flung out face-first onto the beach. The only ones left with their dignity was a tall woman with a grandiose coat over her shoulders, who kept standing straight on the only covered boat, and a stout, bearded man who only survived because she had reached out and grabbed his collar at the last second, leaving him dangling in the air above the sand.

It was a scene that happened so suddenly that Usopp had to check his memory to make sure that his brain somehow didn't skip over a few seconds, minutes, half an hour or something. And so he had to take the time to _really_ look and let the whole thing sink in.

“Hey! Is that really the safest landing you can do?!” the man snapped, twisting himself to look at the woman. He was, notably, wearing some sort of bubble around his head, and suddenly Usopp had a sick feeling in his gut.

The woman said nothing, but set the man back on his feet with the sort of face that encapsulated a sigh. She was tall, her head scraping the jaunty umbrella set over the Celestial Dragon's boat, and her bobbed, crimped haircut made her look young, though looking closely, her face itself clearly had the sort of lines that came with age. The ostentatious coat over her shoulders was a marine coat. In fact, the people all picking themselves off the sand were wearing the whites of the marines.

He was so totally, completely, and absolutely screwed.

“Close your mouth,” someone hissed, pushing his jaw back up. “Stop crying! You should look presentable.”

Presentable _how?!_ Like a trussed up pig?! But before he could say anything, he felt someone push down on his head and plant his face into the ground; easy to do since his knees had turned to jelly anyways.

It was probably punishable by death to stare at a Celestial Dragon, but Usopp snuck a look anyways because if he’s going to suffer a horrible fate why not at least see how it does down, and watched as a group of four marines scrabbled to march a golden sedan chair to the Celestial Dragon and knelt to let him climb in. Then, they took him about ten steps to where the island residents prostrated themselves. Lined up behind the chair, the rest of the marine officers stood at attention with rifles prepared. A man in a black suit stood beside the chair with a pad of paper and pen at the ready.

“Present your quota,” said the suit, and Usopp found himself dragged up again. One by one, the island residents (or rather...they were slaves, weren't they) set down a basket. And he was led up beside the baskets as well, held in place by the man who hadn't let go of him since the beginning. The grip on his wrist tightened as they stopped, standing alone among the more inanimate offerings. The suit paused in his tabulations and scrutinized Usopp from behind his sunglasses. Usopp gave him a helplessly clueless look, and received no sympathy whatsoever.

The Celestial Dragon lazily leaned over the side of his chair. “What's this?”

Before the suit could say anything else, one of the slaves stepped up – the weathered lady that had acted as a leader before. “I can explain.” When the man in the suit shifted his weight towards her, she took a step back and gave a stilted bow. “Master,” she added, softer, not raising her head. “This is the one you've been looking for.”

Oh _boy_ did he not like the sound of that, and his thoughts were firing about a mile a minute because _something_ had to go if not his feet and what the hell could this even be about? Why the hell would a _Celestial freaking Dragon_ be looking for _him_ specifically, only it wasn't him, but Sanji and holy _shit_ was this related to that 'Only Alive' thing? Holy crap holy crap a Celestial Dragon wanted Sanji (him) alive, and there was possibly only one reason and if he was right then _holy crap._

Usopp could feel himself being scrutinized and so he scrutinized right back, forcing his eyes to go straight up and look into the face of the man who wanted Sanji alive.

A set of whorled eyebrows shot upwards, and probably for the first time in history, the eyebrows in question weren't Sanji's.

* * *

“What's goin' on? Hey. Yo, Robin,” Franky whispered, a feat in and of itself. When Robin simply continued to concentrate on eavesdropping, he slumped against their hiding place (a conveniently placed, conveniently sized rock) and growled, “Shoulda grabbed Swirly when we had the chance, dammit.”

“There didn't seem to be much time to,” Brook replied quietly, his spine bent in several odd angles to avoid detection.

“We still shoulda,” Franky insisted petulantly, only to be shushed by Robin's hand to his mouth.

The situation, from what Robin could tell, was getting...complicated. And she could tell a lot, given her specialty when it came to surveillance and all manners of espionage. She could even follow the thoughts behind Usopp's expression as he quickly came to the same conclusions that she did regarding Sanji's ancestry, and watched as he had quite suddenly pulled himself out of his captor's grasp and stood haughtily in a pose that could only have been more supercilious if he had his own, more impressive nose to look down from.

Franky squinted from behind the rock. “What the hell's he doing?”

He was, in an impressively snooty voice, bluffing like hell, spouting the sort of things that the ridiculously wealthy would say, at least as imagined by the ridiculously not-so-wealthy. Things like “Unhand me, urchin!” and “How dare you treat me like this,” and “I'll tell my father” and so on. It was an entertaining performance, but as it turned out, Usopp had misjudged his role somewhat. The Celestial Dragon made a small gesture and his suited man planted a fist right in Usopp's gut, shutting him up quickly. The man who had held him jumped back with surprise, leaving the suit to hold him up. Franky stood immediately, one of his hands folding back.

Robin pulled him back down with a net of arms and snapped, “You can't.”

“What? Did something happen?” Brook asked, his head tucked between his legs. He moved to straighten up, but Robin pushed him back down as well.

“This situation has a Celestial Dragon involved,” she continued, ignoring Brook's yelp of shock. “We need to employ subtlety, _not_ reckless abandon.”

“If we just _sit here,_ they're gonna take him away!” Franky shot back, moving to stand up again but being pulled back down.

Robin stared him down with cold eyes. “That woman there is an admiral. They're allowed to use any force necessary when it comes to protecting the Celestial Dragons. We are already outnumbered. _We can't afford to make a scene._ ”

Franky opened his mouth, gritted his teeth shut, before finally sinking back against the rock, his insides making a low humming sound. Brook fell into a contemplative silence, looking far too dead for comfort. Robin turned back to the developing situation.

“It's not hopeless,” she said after a while, not looking at either of them. “This just isn't the time for our usual brand of problem solving.”

“Yeah yeah, I get it,” Franky muttered. Robin patted him on his head sympathetically.

* * *

The punch, to be honest, made him want to throw up. The fact that he had fallen against the guy who punched him in the first place was just further motivation. But he didn't, and the moment for revenge passed when the suit handed him back over to the slave, who wrapped an arm around him awkwardly to support him.

“And how is the harvest?” the Celestial Dragon drawled, his eyes flitting to the baskets. Usopp saw the slavewoman snap her head up in alarm, open her mouth to say something, but then bowed down again instead. “Overseer.”

“Everybody met their quota,” the man holding Usopp growled out. His voice sounded much too gruff, much too fake compared to before, but nobody seemed to notice. The Celestial Dragon nodded towards the suit, who had started looking through the baskets, and all of them shone and shimmered with more jewels than Usopp ever saw in one place, and that included Nami's stash.

“All accounted for, Saint Vinsmoke,” the suit confirmed.

“Load it all up. That one follows me.” As one, the marines filed into place, hefting the baskets up and turning back to their fleet of ships. One of them appeared in front of Usopp and grabbed him by the arm and pulled him away.

“Wait!” said the slavewoman, taking Usopp's other arm and for a second, his heart fluttered with hope. For a second. “I should have the bounty!” She looked at the marines around her, briefly flicked her eyes at Saint Vinsmoke, went back to the marines, her face a question mark even though she had stated a declaration.

Saint Vinsmoke's face soured. “Overseer,” he said, snapping his fingers.

The slave pressed his lips tight together before uncoiling his whip from his side and snapping it against the ground. He stepped towards the slavewoman, paused, raised his arm…

She threw herself onto the sand before he could do anything. “Excuse me for my outburst,” she said, her voice now even. “But please, I beg you, I ask for a reward, sir. We've captured this man for your sake, at the risk of our lives, _please_ consider that we deserve something in return.”

Every movement on the beach stopped, all attuned Saint Vinsmoke's expression. He stared impassively at the prostrated woman. And then:

“You marines are in charge of the bounties, aren't you? Get the money out.”

The marine holding Usopp almost dropped him as he frantically patted his pockets. The rest of the marines awkwardly did the same, shooting looks of desperation at each other. For the first time, the marine woman spoke up.

“We don't exactly have a hundred million belis on us at the moment. You'd have to take it up with HQ to get the cash. Sorry,” she said tonelessly, her face forcefully blank.

Saint Vinsmoke rounded on her, his face turning red. “ _What?_ Do you expect _me_ to pay my _own property?_ ”

“Please, sir, if I may suggest, you can give freedom instead. Not to all of us,” the slavewoman hastily added, cutting off the protest on his tongue without even looking up, “but please, my daughter...”

“That one had a daughter?” Saint Vinsmoke looked towards the suited man for confirmation.

“Yes, Saint Vinsmoke. She would be seven years old now.”

The Celestial Dragon made a tired, snorting sound and said, “Write a receipt of freedom. Let's go.”

Usopp was carried on board a boat, but he had time to look back onto the beach and see the slavewoman, being embraced by her peers, clutching a piece of paper and crying too loud to form words, and yet he could hear her hiccup “Thank you,” over and over. And that was all he caught before the marine woman barked a command and the boats all shot off as one over the ocean.

* * *

On closer view, the warship was, in fact, not a warship. It was more accurately a cruise ship that just happened to be dressed for battle at all times, for safety's sake, if only because a ship didn't sail around the Grand Line absolutely bedazzled with gold and gems without having ways to protect itself. The whole thing would have been stripped down faster than meat on a bone otherwise.

The sails didn't have the marine symbol on them, but some sort of claw-like shape instead. Still, the whole place was absolutely flushed with them – cleaning the decks, polishing the decorations, checking the ropes – but all of them instantly stood at respectful attention when Vinsmoke stepped aboard. For his part, he didn't even acknowledge the change in atmosphere, just continued on below deck with his entourage – and Usopp – in tow.

The hallways were lined with gold too, and it was a marvel the whole thing didn't sink under its own gaudiness. But as they descended a stairwell (Usopp started counting the flights for later reference), things started getting dull. Plain, even, with the walls a pure, unpainted steel and the lights completely utilitarian in nature, and it was getting bizarre, seeing one of those bubbleheads in an environment like this.

They turned into a room, a small room with lines tied to pipes and crisscrossing all over and various laundry hanging on them. The floor looked slick in places where water pooled below clothing, and the smell itself was a confusing mixture of damp and warm – that one came from an iron heater in the corner. The pipes dripped with condensation into wide, sudsy buckets. Washboards leaned against firewood.

Somewhere in the middle of it all there was a woman, somewhere in her thirties but her expression looking like she had wandered far off into her sixties. Despite that, she glowed in her surroundings with her smooth skin and her golden hair. The style of her clothes didn't look quite suited to doing laundry, but had seemed to become suited over time and constant work until whatever color they had been faded away and whatever lace had fallen off. She had looked up when the door opened, but seeing her visitor, turned back to the clothes she was scrubbing.

“My darling,” Saint Vinsmoke crooned, and Usopp almost jumped because he almost _recognized_ that voice and recognizing it made him want to throw up all over again. “I've got a surprise for you.”

The water continued sloshing around, spilling out whenever she scrubbed a little too hard.

Saint Vinsmoke paused, and when he spoke again, his voice lost some of that sing-song quality. “You'll be happy to know that you no longer have any reason to run away. I've found everything you want.”

“You don't – “ the woman started, her voice surprisingly hard for her soft appearance, but then she had looked up as Saint Vinsmoke stepped aside to show Usopp – and she stopped still.

“That's right,” said Saint Vinsmoke after a moment's pause, “he's back. No more of these grand escape plans, hm?” He smiled, naively genuine. Usopp looked at her, and she was staring at him, looking so pale that she could have been dead. He looked away, and back again. She stood up, quite suddenly, not noticing how her hands dripped water down her skirt.

Saint Vinsmoke watched them both and said, much too kindly to fit him, “I'll let you two have some alone time.” And then the two of them were alone.

That seemed to be the very signal that the woman was waiting for, because as soon as the door closed, she flung herself around Usopp, making him lose balance and forcing the two of them onto the floor. But she didn't seem to even notice, wailing and crying so much that he couldn't tell if his clothes were getting wet from tears or from laundry water, and she clung to him like wet fabric and all he could do was numbly wait until her sobs turned into hitched breaths turned into mourning words: “my son, my son.”

This was a bit awkward.


	4. Chapter 4

“So? You gonna kill me?”

The man guarding Sanji blanched and jumped all the way to the far corner of the room. “N- _no!_ Of course not! We, we aren't – “

“Then I'd appreciate it if you untied me.”

“I...can't do that either,” the man explained apologetically. Sanji sighed and stared at the thatched ceiling. Didn't even bother to reposition his head to avoid The Nose. Out of all the times he's been captured, this was the _saddest._

Though he's pretty sure he's only ever been captured once. Twice? So it wasn't _hard_ to be disappointing, but this was too disappointing to even contemplate that any future captures could possibly be more disappointing. Because it wasn't possible to be more disappointing than _this._

“C'mon,” he said. “Try a _little_ harder than that. Who's in control here?”

“Annabelle,” the man replied automatically.

“No, I mean _here._ In this situation.”

The kid, for Sanji was already thinking of him as a kid (because as beefy as he was he had too young an attitude), blinked at him. “Me, I guess.”

“Yes, _you!_ Exactly! The one with the whip!”

The kid looked down and admitted, “None of us really like using much...” But Sanji pressed on because he wasn't here to be a goddamn psychiatrist.

“So what the hell're you doing, all the way over there?” Sanji stood up, strode over to the corner, and nudged the kid with his leg – his ankle twinged in complaint, but he didn’t fall over. “C'mon. Get back over here.”

It was remarkably easy to lead the guard back to his original place. Sanji made a show of giving him a critical eye. “Look confident! If you don't even have bars to hold me, then at least look threatening enough so you don't need them! Stand straight. Shoulders back. Wide stance. _Wider._ Keep your head up!”

“Like...this?” said the kid, halfway sounding like he he was just going with the flow in the hopes this would stop soon.

“Cross your arms. Look angry. Shoulders _up,_ head...” he added warningly, and the kid obeyed without having to listen. Sanji stood back, examined. Paced back and forth, then all the way around.

When he kicked the back of his knees, the kid went down like gravity had it in for him; didn't even have the time to react, poor guy, before Sanji jumped onto his back and sat there and then…

...Well. He didn't actually expect to get this far at all.

The kid was starting to thrash, but there wasn't much he could do. He was already having a hard time getting his own arms out from under him, and his legs couldn't do much more than bruises, even if they managed to connect. For all his size, he couldn't actually throw Sanji off. It was hard to get up once someone had you on the ground. All Sanji had to do was brace his knees on either side of the guy so he couldn't lose balance.

What had he been _thinking?_ Doing a move so desperate it shouldn't have even _worked_ and then not even figuring out what to do after when it did? Hands tied. He couldn't run away like this, he'd get caught. Couldn't try to work out a deal to untie him, because he had no way to maintain his threat and get his hands untied simultaneously. And with Usopp's spindly legs, he _absolutely_ couldn't knock this guy out and book it.

Sanji became somewhat aware of the kid shouting for help under him. Shit, were the others back already? Even if he could keep this guy pinned, he couldn't do anything if he got surrounded again!

Sanji twisted around to look out the door and the kid, feeling the shift in his weight, rolled over and managed to get him off, _goddammit,_ and Sanji recovered by rolling back to his feet and, screw it, booking right the hell out, running _straight_ into a band of the residents coming in. Double shit.

The crowd at the door seemed surprised, at least, which was a plus, but he was somewhat surprised himself, and by the time he attempted to just barrel through them, someone got the bright idea to trip him up and slam him on the dirt path. He briefly felt his head bounce on the ground and fuzz out for what felt like a century and when he came back the woman standing on his back was saying, “We can resolve this peacefully.”

“Where's Usopp,” Sanji spat out, along with some of the dirt, and after listening to a long enough pause, he clarified, “That guy that was with me.”

“Oh.” Another pause, with a different flavor. “You don't have to worry about him anymore. He's alive,” the woman hastily added, which didn't make her statement any less worrying. “But...you shouldn't expect him back.”

“Okay, _hang on,_ ” Sanji started, trying to roll over, but the foot on his back dug deeper.

“I _know_ how this sounds, but that's why we need your help!” she said, and he was the one on the floor tied up. Go figure. “Whoever your captain is, they won't hurt us as long as we have you, right? So all that has to happen is we hand you over, you leave, and everybody forgets the whole thing. Okay?”

It _did_ sound like a plea, at least from his position face-down on the ground. And it made sense – as long as you worked on common sense. But unfortunately that's where this woman made her first mistake.

“Alright. I get what you're saying,” Sanji started, slowly, feeling his lips scratch against loose pebbles, “and I think you _really_ ought to untie me before it's too late.”

The foot dug a little more into his back. “You are our _insurance,_ we can't let you – “

“No, no, excuse me, I'm sorry, but – I mean, you have the right idea, but this is just going to have the exact opposite reaction you want, our captain isn't...he's kinda, if he sees this sort of scene then he's probably most likely maybe gonna start, um, rampaging.”

He could _feel_ incredulous stares burning into him. “But...we have _you.”_

“Yes,” he agreed. Definitely true.

“And...we are threatening to harm you if he tries anything to harm us...”

“Yes,” he said again, he understood a hostage situation perfectly, thank you very much.

“So…he wouldn't _dare..._ ”

Sanji sighed. Dust tickled his eyes. “He would.”

If he had to guess, the incredulous stares intensified. “Doesn't he _care_ about his crew members?”

“He _does,_ but he doesn't really think – look, just take my word for it, I'll vouch for you, but you'll have to untie me – “

“Sanji-kun?!”

It took a bit of work because of the goddamn nose, but Sanji managed to turn his head the other direction. Even from this sideways point of view, Nami looked absolutely delightful and also absolutely _not_ a dimwitted act-first-think-later glutton piece of shit.

“Thief!” someone in the mob said, pointing towards a noticeably bulging bag in Zoro's arms. He handed it over to Nami, who took it out of reflex.

“Your captain?” the woman asked above.

“Nami-san~”

“Usopp!”

“Shit,” Sanji muttered as everybody looked to the other side.

“Sanji,” Chopper reminded.

“ _Ma?_ ” a young, unfamiliar voice yelped out.

“Annalie!” said the woman, almost stepping off of Sanji.

“Gomu Gomu no...”

“ _LUFFY,_ ” multiple despairing voices rang out, just this _once_ take in the situation, _think_ a little, _please._

Quite suddenly, there was nobody standing on Sanji's back anymore.

* * *

“So you aren't my son,” she repeated dully. She sounded worse than Usopp expected, like he told her a hopeful lie and she couldn't even bring herself to play along. Only he was telling an uncomfortable truth and she had accepted it with a familiar despair, and he almost wished he hadn't said anything at all. Almost. There were loads of things he would lie about, and a magical reunion between mother and son sounded like such a beautiful lie, but it fell heavy in his stomach like he ate a bitter cannonball or something. And so he didn't lie to her and he didn't lie to himself.

“Sorry,” he said, and why couldn't it just be a simple reunion story? Why were things always complicated? Probably the ol' eccentric Strawhat luck at work. “I know it's really weird and totally unbelievable – “

“No, I believe you.”

“That fast?!”

She smiled, and it reminded him of meals and another similar smile that was too rare and fleeting (and even if technically he could make that smile right now all he wanted, it would just be a counterfeit). “I've been on the Grand Line for a while. I can believe anything. Besides, shouldn't we be thinking about escape instead?”

“Oh. Um. Huh?” But she was already sweeping aside all the dripping clothes and pressing her ear against the door. “Escape? Did you say escape?”

She shushed him, then straightened to peer through the door window. “I don't even see a guard. What an idiot. Probably thinking I'm too busy crying my darling head off,” she sneered. “'I'll give you two some alone time.' What an ass.”

Usopp decided not to mention that, a little while ago, she _had_ been crying her darling head off and instead said, “Escape? Uh, I mean, I got nothing against escape, but. Right now?”

“ _Yes_ now! There's no guard, don't know how long that'll last. I've tried to escape so many times I'm not even allowed to sleep with the other slaves in case I try something. Besides, you just told me – my son is on the island!” Those words glittered in the air, and when she turned to look at him her face reflected those words like the moon, and the light shining through the wet clothes lit her up like a wonderful kaleidoscope of hope so that everything Usopp could say felt stupid in comparison.

But he still said, meekly, “I don't even know your name.”

Her mouth fluttered open, letting out a stuttered croak, before she said, “Aðalbjörg.”

Aðalbjörg. Ah-thal-byerg. Sanji's mom. Sanji's mom! Sanji had a mom!! Theoretically, he knew that had to be the case, but this was the first time he saw someone's mom! (Unless that crazy witch doctor was Chopper's mom? Kinda?) It felt like something to celebrate, something to cherish, though maybe not right now at this very instant.

“I'm Usopp,” he said back and smiled reflexively at the warmth from Sanji's mom Aðalbjörg's hand as he shook it, even if it was a little wet and wrinkly from doing laundry.

The handshake kept going until it overstayed its welcome, and then they were just standing there holding hands and Sanji's mom Aðalbjörg was fiddling with his fingers aimlessly and she asked, whispered, “What's his name?”

He sucked his breath in. A million stories of separation and loss went through his head, all of them much too maudlin to be reality, and he said, “Sanji.”

He let her soak in the syllables for a moment before he pulled his hand back and said, “What's the escape plan?”

She took a deep breath.

* * *

The ship was pretty much a private cruise liner, going wherever Saint Vinsmoke wanted. As a cruise ship, it was loaded with rooms and floors and recreational activities, and the space was so large that even the appropriate number of marines would have a hard time monitoring it.

Currently, the most concentrated group of guards were around Saint Vinsmoke, which included the admiral (admiral?!) in charge of the Saint's guard duty. That made him a must avoid, which was simple enough. It would just mean avoiding all the hedonistic hot spots on the ship, such as the room entirely filled with gems.

(“That sounds pretty freaking hedonistic.”

“I hear he swims in it.”

That sounded more painful than enjoyable, but Usopp instantly said, “We have someone kinda like that too.”)

Corridors around the gem room were likely to be full of marines still carrying today's haul in, and so should be avoided. That meant probably taking a rather long path, but they would need to make a detour anyways. Below deck would be for the most part clear, but the deck itself would be crawling with marines working on sails, rigging, so on and so forth; possible for one person to sneak by, but probably not two, and so to safely get past all of the marines and to a rowboat, they would need a distraction.

The ship had a communications system, and at least one station would probably be in abandoned areas. They just had to get to one and fabricate some sort of panic (ooh, hole in the hull, an attack, kitchen fire, maybe all at once). In the resulting scramble, they could then make their way to a boat and disembark before anybody figured out what was happening.

And that was it. Escape. Simple.

* * *

It took a concentrated effort between Chopper and Nami to negotiate peace, which was mostly done by Chopper knocking Luffy to the ground before he could knock anybody else out and Nami punching Zoro in the face when he started to draw his sword. Before the other residents could decide whether this bewildering show was a trap or not, Annalie ran crying to her mom and that was enough to shame everybody into non-violence.

Still, Sanji immediately jumped on Luffy once he got untied and breathed out, “You're lucky I'm not in my own body right now, asshole, or you'd be buried in the ground _right now._ ”

“Eh? What'd I do?”

“You _punched_ an _old lady!”_

“But she was standing on you!” Luffy protested, and Sanji gurgled out a string of incomprehensible anger before slamming his nose into Luffy's eye. At least that thing was useful for something.

Chopper had rushed off to the fallen woman as soon as Luffy was under control, and hadn't paid any attention to the way the other villagers bristled and raised their pick-axes, simply knelt next to Annalie and started pelting questions at the woman on the ground, at the least determining her level of consciousness. Nami, done with her own brow-beating, moved on to crowd control.

“It's alright, he's a doctor! He can take care of her. We're _very_ sorry about this misunderstanding – “

“I'm not,” Luffy declared from where he stood, and Sanji grounded his boot on Luffy's toes, which didn't actually do anything but was still satisfying in a way.

“ _Anyways,_ let's just all calm down and take a deep breath and _not antagonize the locals, Luffy.”_

“No. It's fine. I was holding your friend hostage.”

Among protests of 'mom!' and 'Annabelle' and 'please lie down,' the woman sat up, shoulders hunched and eye swollen shut, but sharing a wry smile with the crowd before leaning her head on her knee.

“See? She was hostaging you!” Luffy said, pointing.

“You only got that just now! And you didn't have to _punch_ her!”

“ _Enough!”_

Everybody turned towards Nami, even the villagers, as she huffed and waited for her own face to stop beating red. “Okay,” she breathed out, and pointed to Annalie. “Are _you_ the one who stole our food?”

“ _Annalie,_ ” her mother said sharply before she could answer, and whapped her on the head lightly. Annalie winced, but nodded in a slow, acute angle.

Nami glanced around. “Where's Usopp?”

Luffy and Chopper looked at Sanji. Sanji clasped his hands behind his back, pressed his lips upward in an apologetically mollifying way. “Wwwwwellll, ah, Nami-swan, it pains me to deliver bad news to your perfect ears – “

“ _Please_ don't talk like that. What happened.”

“We got separated.”

Zoro snorted. “You got lost.”

“ _You_ don't get to say that!”

“I _specifically_ made you two go together so that once we got _her,_ ” Nami said, whipping her arm towards Annalie, “we could get _you_ sorted out and then we could _leave,_ but then you get separated anyways!” She set her head in her hands, cradling a sigh, and pulled at the bags under her eyes before setting her arms akimbo. “Great. Great! I guess we just have to go and find him – “

“If you're looking for your blond friend, then forget him. He's with Saint Vinsmoke now. I turned him over.”

“W-wait, Annabelle, don't piss them off – “

Sanji snapped his hand out and grabbed onto Luffy again, but found himself being dragged along instead as Luffy marched thunderously towards the villagers. Nami raced in front of him and braced against his shoulders, just barely stopping his forward momentum. “ _Stop it,_ you already punched her once – “

“So my daughter has given you all a bit of trouble, I assume?”

Sanji found the woman, Annabelle, examining him, and he struggled to match the gaze. “So you're Black Leg Sanji? Count yourself lucky. Saint Vinsmoke has been looking for you for a long time, and now that he has, you happen to be someone else.” Her low chuckle washed over Sanji like low tide and he felt everybody looking at him now. Only Alive, the poster had said. A poor comfort.

“Saint Vinsmoke,” he said, slow and deliberate, because if he didn't he might just scream instead. “That's a Celestial Dragon. What does he even want with me?”

“Well, you wouldn't have known, under the circumstances...Saint Vinsmoke likes to buy slaves to engage in certain...activities,” Annabelle said tactfully, her eyes slipping to where Annalie sat. “Sanji...or, well, _you,_ were the product of that.”

Chopper froze in the middle of dabbing at the woman's swollen eye. “Eh?! Doesn't that mean...Sanji's the son of a Celestial Dragon?!”

Hearing it out loud almost could have knocked Sanji out cold. He wanted to blame his sudden case of jelly legs on Usopp's stupid body, but his mind was still stuck on those words. Son of a Celestial Dragon.

“No. He's the _property_ of a Celestial Dragon. And for a long time he had been lost – “

“Shut up,” Sanji said. Then, “Please.”

She did, which was surprising enough that Sanji said, “Sorry.”

“Don't apologize!” Nami said, and she forgot all about Luffy to harass Annabelle herself. “What's this about 'property?!' Why the heck would Sanji-kun belong to anybody?! I _dare_ you to say that again, see what happens!”

Annabelle didn't take that dare, but one of the others did, a less authoritative woman that held her hands up in defense and said, “It's just the law of inheritance! When, when you're a child of a slave…you inherit your mother's status. So even if a Celestial Dragon is your father...”

“...if your mother is a slave, so are you. And the guy gets another slave,” Zoro finished, when it seemed nobody else wanted to.

“Is that why you have the same eyebrows as Sanji, Annalie?” Chopper asked, his voice quiet. “Is your father that Celestial Dragon too?”

Annalie looked at him, then at her mom, who closed her eyes and said, “Yes.”

Zoro broke the silence again with a long, loud sigh. “Jeez...your damn past sure put us in a mess here, shitty cook.”

“I didn't know _any_ of this,” Sanji muttered, which was strange, because he had intended to shout and curse out the marimo but he seemed to have forgotten, and it must be Usopp doing the hyperventilating, not him. Usopp was always the panicky one, but he really didn't remember, he remembered North Blue, he remembered a ship, a long journey, and then a place he knew as home long before the Baratie. Bits and pieces that almost seemed imaginary, not entirely grounded, but nothing about, about…

“Your mother gave birth in the North Blue. You lived there for a few years before Saint Vinsmoke visited the East. Your mother escaped with you but was caught again, only you weren't there, and she wouldn't say where you were.” Annabelle clasped her hands together and stared hard at the ground. “She kept trying to escape. But she was still his favorite. Or maybe because she kept trying to escape, she was his favorite. Either way, Saint Vinsmoke made it a policy that any pregnant slaves would be sent here to work his jewel mines, here, where there's no way of escape. He comes back every once in a while to take what we mine and our children when he pleases.”

“Why're you telling me this?” Sanji asked, but his tone was dull. “What, you hold a grudge against me 'cause my mom's the reason you're all here? You saying that's why you turned me in?”

“I want you to understand,” said Annabelle, her words pointed, but Sanji didn't move to look at her, “that for people like us, there's no escape except through the laws our masters make. That's why I traded Black Leg Sanji for freedom. And that's why I need to ask you a favor, even if you think me ridiculous.” And slowly, inevitably, Annabelle rolled onto her knees and set her forehead on the ground.

“Please take my daughter with you. Take her anywhere but here.”

Annalie blinked once, twice, before saying, “What?”

“None of us will ever have children again. We _refuse._ Annalie is the only one here who hasn't been taken. As long as she gets out of this cycle, then I can die happy. We don't have a boat for her to go on, so there's no one I can ask but you. Please take Annalie.”

“No,” Luffy said, the answer so sudden that Annabelle instinctively waited for one a few moments longer before realizing. Even when she did, she simply collapsed inward while sitting up with a self-deprecating smile, looking even older than she already was. “I...can't say I wasn't expecting that.”

“Now hold on, Luffy,” Nami started, taking a deep breath in a way that seemed like she wanted Luffy to do the same. He didn’t. She continued on. “I know you're angry, but we're at least gonna need, uh, Annalie to switch Usopp and Sanji back as soon as possible.”

“I'm not angry!” Luffy shouted back. “I just think they're all dumb! They can _all_ fit on the Sunny!”

Annabelle looked very off-guard for a moment, then very irritated. “I just _told_ you there's no way for us to escape!”

“There's my _ship,_ stupid!”

“ _Like I said,_ Saint Vinsmoke will either catch us, and we will be punished, or he would make things worse for the rest of his slaves!”

“Well, I'm gonna kick his ass anyways, so whatever!”

“Do you even know what you're _saying?!”_ someone else shouted from the background. “He has an army of marines!”

“Yeah.”

“And an admiral! An _admiral!_ ”

“Yeah.”

“He's a _Celestial Dragon!_ ”

“Yeah. And my friend's there, so I gotta go get him.”

“I'm trying to say that you _can't!”_ Annabelle shouted, finally losing her composure. “His ship already set sail!”

* * *

It should have been simple.

The waves pushed the ship along, forward, forward. The island was much smaller from here. A rowboat couldn't cross that distance.

He was getting further and further from himself and he wanted to just break away, go back to where he belonged, and for a moment it felt like the ship was moving along without him and he was just left floating above the ocean, sans body, sans anything, just the endless sea above and the endless sea below, and he only snapped back when Aðalbjörg tugged him back from toppling over the railing.

“It's okay, it's okay! We can still – we can, uh...”

They could what? Take a small boat and capsize immediately? Get eaten by sea kings? No. It was hopeless. And so when the marines came back on deck and surrounded them, he could barely work up the energy to be shocked, or even disappointed. The island would probably be a mere dot soon enough, and none of his friends knew where he was. Nobody would find him. The future stretched out into repetitive loneliness, confinement, abuse, and who knows what else, all while living in a body that still felt a size too large.

Aðalbjörg had stopped talking, and Usopp tuned in to see that Saint Vinsmoke had arrived and was now standing in front of the both of them, his expression sharp and severe behind his clear helmet. The marines were all pointing rifles at them, as though they were dangerous criminals, and technically one of them was, but it seemed something like overkill. Saint Vinsmoke didn't gesture for them to lower their weapons.

“I suppose,” he started, his voice an airy sigh, “that I've been too kind.”

Aðalbjörg didn't respond. Her face had, in fact, gone very blank. Usopp didn't have a hard time following suit. But the sea wind coupled with the sway of the ship along with the sight of Vinsmoke's face was starting to churn something within him. Why should he be here? Why should this, this _shithead_ hold a man of the sea captive _on the sea?_

“I was too excited. I thought this would solve your...running problem, and I didn't take the usual precautions with new slaves. It was my fault, I shouldn't have expected much better from you.”

He was rolling his eyes skyward, as though conferring with other celestials about the disagreeable problems he had to deal with. The air was tense with ready bullets and military discipline, and yet he stood there with all the manner of a disappointed parent. He turned back to consult a suited man. “Do we have extra collars somewhere?”

He turned back. He turned his back, towards Usopp, and he would, wouldn't he? So unconcerned with the world and his surroundings because he knew someone else would take care of it, but that was going to kill him someday, possibly now, because Usopp realized he had already dashed forward, his leg was now aiming for that head, but even though he had watch Sanji kick plenty of times in plenty of positions he couldn't seem to quite reach that kicking height himself, and in any case, it was a moot point because the admiral was suddenly in front of his leg and once the two collided, it was like none of the force had existed at all. Usopp's leg stopped against the admiral's arm and neither recoiled. Usopp immediately toppled over, unused to balancing on one leg.

As soon as he hit the floor, she set a foot on his chest, and though she didn't put her weight on it, she was immediately immovable. She crossed her arms and gazed down at the other marines, not paying any mind to Usopp's attempts to remove her foot. “Inexcusable. What were those guns for?”

A marine saluted out of habit and blurted out, “Excuse us, Admiral Ryokugyu! But...Saint Vinsmoke did say to keep them alive...”

“Then at least think about what to do if they attack anyways. What are you, idiots?”

The ship erupted with a chorus of, “We're very sorry!” but Ryokugyu waved it off.

“Eh. As long as you're sorry, it's alright.”

“It's _not,_ Admiral,” Saint Vinsmoke cut in testily, not looking the least bit disconcerted about almost being attacked. “Is this the sort of performance we pay the Navy for? I have half a mind to report this to your superiors!”

Ryokugyu didn't look at him, but stared straight ahead. “Understood, _sir._ Hey, you. Stop scratching at my leg; it's not gonna move.”

“Wh-what did you do?” Usopp gasped out, letting his arms drop.

“Do you know inertia?” Seeing his puzzled squint, Ryokugyu said, “Ah, never mind. It's too complicated to explain. Now am I gonna have to stand on him all day or is _someone_ going to get some restraints? Pay attention, people! You, search him!”

“You didn't even _search_ him beforehand?” Saint Vinsmoke said, his voice growing strained. “When he could have had _weapons?”_

“I suppose we should have considered that,” Ryokugyu replied, staring stiffly out to sea. “But then I suppose we must have been too excited about solving someone's running problem to realize earlier.”

“I hope you realize that _your_ incompetence endangers _my_ life! Any more mistakes, and I'm _sure_ I could have you demoted...”

Usopp felt someone rifle through his pockets and remove Sanji's usual cargo – a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Ryokugyu's eyes brightened as she caught sight of them and she took both and immediately lit up. For a moment, she looked somewhat peaceful as she closed her eyes and let smoke stream out her lips.

“ _Do you understand?”_ Saint Vinsmoke prompted, and Ryokugyu's expression darkened like a blackout.

“Yes, _sir._ ”

“Good. Take them both downstairs. I want this one properly initiated.”

Someone brought cuffs, and when they curled around his wrists with a click, Usopp couldn't help but think it as the sound of his future setting into place.

* * *

The ship had already set sail.

Annabelle winced as soon as she said the words, as though expecting retaliation, but no outburst came.

Or at least, Sanji didn't hear any. The ship had already set sailed? What kind of joke was that? It would mean they were too late. It would mean that when Usopp was literally having his goddamn life traded away, he had just been sitting around like a useless duck. It would mean that Usopp was getting caught up in shit that had _nothing_ to do with him, shit that could possibly get him _killed_ down the line, none of which should be happening to _him,_ but to _Sanji._ He was taking Sanji's place and the thought was agonizingly infuriating, if only because Sanji was just _standing_ here when for all he knew –

“Dammit, then we gotta go! C’mon,” Luffy said, grabbing at Annalie’s wrist, but she quickly wrenched her way out of his grasp and ran back to her mother’s side. Luffy turned, mouth half-open, like he was personally affronted that she would just _do_ that. But he said nothing else.

The villagers now clustered away from the Strawhats, looking anywhere but at them, settling down on a makeshift seat or drifting towards their homes. Annabelle patted Annalie’s head, but spoke over it to Luffy. “Does that mean you’re taking her? Even if it’s just because you need her, that’s fine, as long as you take her somewhere safe.”

“ _Ma,”_ Annalie wailed, clutching her arm even tighter. She was starting to cry now, and it made it harder for her to get her words out as she gasped for irregular breaths. “Wh-why d’ I gotta go? I don’t wanna! I wanna st-stay with you! I don’t, I don’t wanna be alone!”

Nami watched the scene for a few seconds before turning away, arms uncomfortably crossed over her chest. She didn’t say anything until the sobs quieted. “Do you really think sending your own kid away is for the best?” Even with her head turned away, her words were pointed. “You’re making it sound all nice, but you’re basically abandoning her, aren’t you?”

It took a while for Annabelle to respond, as though she had needed a moment to keep her tone even. “It’s not as though I like doing this.”

“You don’t have to! There’s no reason to separate! If you just came with us – “

“And where would we go?” Annabelle shot back, rising to her feet. Her eye was starting to turn an ugly purple. She almost dislodged her daughter’s grip, but Annalie simply clung to her leg instead. “Where would you drop us off that we’ll be safe? No matter what, we’re forever marked as property! Do you think we can live a normal life?”

“You keep saying that, but you want to, don’t you? And what about the others that you’re talking for? Huh?” Nami gestured widely towards the entire area of the town, towards all the other villagers that glanced up and looked away guiltily.

“Forget it,” said Sanji.

He had, at some point, slid down a stone wall and sat, despondent, during the entire argument. Nami whirled on him, her mouth fluttering a few seconds before she found her wind once more and said, “Forget it? We can’t just for _get_ it! We need her to fix – “

“No,” he said. “It’s fine,” he insisted. “She doesn’t want to go. Let’s not force anybody here. It...it doesn’t matter, anyways.”

Nami scrutinized him as he pushed himself back on his feet. She wasn’t the only one. He could feel several gazes on him, heavy as they were. “Are you serious right now? We’ve been going around trying to get your shit sorted out and, what, you’re giving up? If we leave, we can’t go back. Annalie can’t switch everything back.”

“I know. It’s fine. We’re just arguing in circles,” he said, trying to sound like he really did think all of it out. Considered his decision, instead of just acting out of a muted sort of panic, a consuming guilt that left him feeling like garbage and wanting to feel like garbage. “Let’s just go.”

He took a step, but nobody moved. Zoro said, “What, you speaking for Usopp now? I don’t think he’d be fine with being stuck as you forever.”

“And _I_ think he probably has a lot more pressing concerns than that, and _maybe_ the shitty body thing isn’t the most important shit right now! Let’s just go!”

But his outburst caused the opposite; rooted everybody’s feet further in the ground. Sanji’s head felt too tight and he almost yanked the bandanna off, but didn’t want to deal with Usopp’s hair springing all over the place. Not that it wasn’t a nuisance now, it was sticking to the back of his neck, heavy with sweat, scratching at his very pores, and somehow it made all of his pores everywhere itchy and he wanted to scratch and scratch until he scratched himself out like a bloody butterfly but everybody was looking at him because he was supposed to be the thinker and he wasn’t thinking, not very well, but they _needed_ to go, or rather, he _wanted_ to go, get out, and he wanted to just rip his head off and throw it into the ocean, and –

– Franky and Brook suddenly jumped out from the forest in the most flamboyantly loud way possible, scaring about half the people half to death. “Oh, hey!” Franky shouted over all the screaming. “ _Here_ you are!”

“What the – “

“Excuse us, Nami-san, but we have important news to impart! Sanji – no, Usopp-san has been kidnapped!”

“We know that,” Chopper said as kindly as he could.

Franky and Brook froze, stunned. “W-well, that's not just it! It was a Celestial Dragon! And that dude's – “

“ – he's Sanji's father?” Nami finished, crossing her arms. “We know that too. If you look around you, you'll see the people who turned Usopp over, y'know. We heard everything from them.”

For the first time, Franky and Brook took in their surroundings and the slaves, who flinched whenever the giant pervert and quite possibly Death itself set their eyes on them. Then, they looked helplessly down at their crew. “You did? So...you know that their ship – “

“ – set sail. We just heard.” Nami pressed her lips together and then kicked at the ground with a loud, “Shit!”

“So...are we…?” Chopper asked, fitting his hooves together and wringing them. “Can we catch them? Are they g-gone…?”

“Okay, wait, here's something you _definitely_ don't know – “

“Where's Robin?” Zoro suddenly said, glancing around, and Franky and Brook's faces dropped.

“Please don't steal our thunder, Zoro-san...this was going to be our very important, hopeful declaration for you all...”

“Yeah! We were gonna be like, 'Robin's on the ship trying to rescue Usopp,' and it would've been – “

“Robin's on the ship?!” Nami repeated, perking up. “Say that first! Oh, thank _god._ Sanji-kun, did you hear that?”

Robin. On the ship. He could almost cry, and he probably already was, with Nami shaking his shoulder and trying to get an answer out of him. It was going to be alright. Was it going to be alright? It was probably going to be alright. Robin _had_ to be able to do something, at least make the situation better somehow.

“Right! Then let's follow her!” Luffy announced suddenly, and then started marching towards where the Sunny probably was. Nami jogged next to him and then twisted him in the direction that the Sunny actually was.

“Can we catch up with them?” she shouted back towards Franky and Brook, who, along with the others, were starting to run after Luffy as well. The villagers hesitated, but then a few sprinted after and then the others started as well, and took up the rear of the group.

“They got a head start, and we still gotta get across the coral – but if we can sail to the other side of the island in like a minute flat, we might still see them!”

“We _will,_ ” Luffy corrected with such certainty that it seemed like the world would go out of its way to accommodate his truth.

“Anyways,” Zoro said lightly, slowing his pace to have a more comfortable conversation with the two late-comers, “it's a good thing you guys weren't around earlier. We were talking about some pretty heavy shit.”

“Huh? What about?” Franky asked.


	5. Chapter 5

A little while after Saint Vinsmoke's entourage left the beach with Usopp in tow but before his ship set sail, a clump of floating seaweed drifted with startling accuracy towards the hull of the ship, ignoring the push and pull of the waves. Just as it was about to bump against the ship, the hull grew a few arms that grabbed at and cradled the mass of seaweed, and finally Robin was able to throw the seaweed off of her makeshift craft.

It was little more than a raft, but like anything Franky built, it was professionally done and designed to work for its purpose. He was even able to weave together the quilt of seaweed as a disguise, a skill that surprised his two companions. After all this, Robin wondered if she could convince Franky to sow an outfit for her. See what he would do.

For now, she heaved one of the hefty rocks she had taken along and set them in a basket of hands on the side of the ship, which wasted no time in sending the rock down a line of arms, all the way around to the other side, where they then knocked it against the hull and let it drop in the water.

Above, Robin heard someone say: “Did you heard that?” She had an eye on the mast, overlooking the whole deck, and she watched everybody's movements carefully as she kept sending rocks down the line. As the thudding continued, the marines on board raised their rifles and ran to the side of the ship, and Robin carried herself up and onto the deck, ran silently behind the backs of the crew, and slipped through the door leading below. Right as she closed the door she heard, “Maybe it was sea kings?”

Next step, get an idea of the ship's layout. This would have been best to know ahead of time, but circumstances called for her to speed things up.

But surveillance wasn't too much of a problem, not for her. She tucked herself into what seemed to be a supply closet and set up eyes around the perimeter so she could see anybody coming, and then bloomed eyes and ears all over the ship, as many as she could handle. She studied a kaleidoscope of images, a view that only she could decipher; she listened intently to movement, patrols, she heard sounds of boredom and sounds of despair, and the words, “We will set sail shortly.”

Robin pressed her lips together. It wasn't like she was counting on having back-up, but she would have liked the option to be available. The further they were out at sea, the harder it would be to make an escape. Would it be better to alter the course of the ship first? Or should she go ahead with locating Usopp? She wanted to say that people came first. But if someone sounded the alarm before she could manage to turn the ship around...the two of them would be stranded with no chance of help. Could she send a double to the helm? But to be honest, despite her multitasking ability, she still wasn't confident enough to move two bodies going separate distances at the same time.

Well. Let's just make this quick, then.

* * *

They went in a line, Usopp in front. He couldn’t see anyone besides the marine officers pulling him along, but Saint Vinsmoke made his presence constantly known as they descended. The gilded walls gave way to pipes, and then gloom, and then a heaviness that weighed on Usopp’s mind like his head had been coated in the iron that surrounded him.

“Time after time after time,” Vinsmoke was saying; or maybe his voice was echoing against the walls down here, making his vented frustrations longer. His voice sounded tired and Usopp knew enough that a tired Celestial Dragon was a dangerous one.

Aðalbjörg wasn’t directly behind him but a bit further back. She didn’t make any sound beyond stifled groans whenever she got wrenched one way or another.

“You never understand. You’re _mine,_ and I don’t give up what belongs to me.”

“I understand now.” It was Aðalbjörg. Her voice was unrecognizably low, squashing out any quaver that might have been in her words. “I promise...it won’t...”

The sound of something dull hitting flesh, a barely contained gasp, and Usopp wanted to turn around then and there and bury the bastard where he stood. But the marines held firm. “I didn’t tell you to speak.”

“Keep moving,” one of the marines whispered, twisting his arm at an odd angle for emphasis, and they continued to descend.

“I’ve tried to discipline you, I’ve tried to reward you. I’ve tried forgiving you for your many...transgressions. I’ve been very patient, but it really is no use expecting a slave to understand kindness, is it? Humans have been ungrateful since the very start...”

“Watch it,” Admiral Ryokugyu growled from the rear.

“Now...did you want to say something?”

Aðalbjörg took a long time to answer. Then, in the same low voice: “I promise it won’t happen again...I won’t run anymore. You don’t need to do anything, I swear.”

“You’ve dodged consequences for a long time now, darling, but not this time. I’ve been nice. But you need to know what happens.”

They were at the very bottom now, standing in front of a door that wouldn’t look out of place in Impel Down. Vinsmoke strode to the head of the line, everybody automatically stepping aside. He knocked on the door, which gave an impressive boom, and a slot at the top slid open in response.

“Two for today,” said Vinsmoke. “Take them in.”

The door opened, but only enough for the hooded man behind to step through. He was too wide to see past, and he closed the door behind him before any curious eyes could squeeze by. Though the glare he gave said that anybody who did try to peek would get a lesson in courtesy.

“My boy can handle things from here. You’re dismissed.” Vinsmoke’s commandeering wave was met by a narrowed stare from Admiral Ryokugyu.

“So you want us to leave you unattended? _Sir,_ ” she added.

“As I _said_ ,” Saint Vinsmoke started with a terse tone, “my boy can handle it _._ This is not a...marine matter.”

As delicately as Vinsmoke tried to phrase it, there was no avoiding the chill that ran down Usopp’s spine. He was going to enter a place with no law, and though he had thrown away law himself in his choice of occupation, the existence of some sort of man-made order was comforting to him. There were rules, a set pattern of behaviors that people of the law followed. Something like morality. In that obscured room, there would be none of that.

Usopp found himself looking up at Admiral Ryokugyu, because if ever there was a time for the marines to intervene _this was it,_ just please, even though the law wasn’t exactly built to protect criminals, please, _please._

Ryokugyu set her jaw, but nodded over to her men. “Hand ‘em over.”

_No,_ his mind said, and he denied this outcome with his entire being, tried to wrench out of his captivity with the force of his denial, but even when he twisted out of the marines’ unprepared grasp, the large, wide man reached down and grabbed his whole arm with one hand and _twisted,_ twisted his arm with a pop, twisted him back into submission, and Usopp stood still once more with tears blinding his eyes, but the sound of crying was coming from Aðalbjörg instead.

When the man reached for Aðalbjörg, Saint Vinsmoke barked, “Gentle! Don’t hurt her.” But she started howling as she exchanged hands, swinging her bound wrists around like she was trying to bludgeon someone with the cuffs.

“It was my idea!” she wailed, spitting at Vinsmoke as she did. “If you wanna hurt anybody, hurt me! Hit me, you coward! Are you afraid of me? Afraid to touch me?! I’d ask if you have a dick under there except I already know! I’m the one who planned the whole thing, he didn’t do nothing! So _hit_ _me!_ ” Her face was red by the end of it, and Usopp now knew that filthy mouths ran in the family. When Vinsmoke didn’t respond, she said, “You dumb little pig’s shit, you think you can stop me from bruising my own _precious skin?_ I know how to make myself unlovable, I know how to make myself _unfuckable!_ I can go to your barren asshole of a wife and tell her everything! And when I do, she’ll kill me!” And then, after another furious, unanswered pause, “If you don’t stop, I’ll kill myself – “

“And I’ll have him follow you!” Vinsmoke finally bellowed back, his gloved hand grabbing Aðalbjörg by her hair, but he stepped away, let go, reconfigured his face from a frothing rage back to his disdainful mien, and glanced at the watching marines. “This is not a _show,_ Admiral.”

Ryokugyu raised her hands peacefully. “Didn’t say a thing. Let’s see to the ship, boys.” She nodded her chin towards the stairs, and the sounds of the marines’ boots lasted longer than the sight of them. The ones left behind could only stay still and listen until the steps faded up into obscurity.

“Inside,” Saint Vinsmoke announced, and, somehow juggling two bodies, the torturer (he couldn’t be anything but) opened the door again and walked them through.

There was nothing but gloom, even with the cozy blaze of the two giant furnaces in the center. The engine room was the life of the ship, but its expanse was desolation, not freedom. There was no life in the metal walls, the echoes of every sound they made, no life in the clamps on the wall that Aðalbjörg was put in after she tried to unsuccessfully grab the ring of keys on the executioner’s belt, not in the cold slab that Usopp was forced onto, where two other similar men melted out of the gloom and held him steady.

It happened suddenly, but someone grabbed his dress shirt, not bothering to try unbuttoning and maneuvering it around his handcuffs. “No,” Usopp said instinctively, and maybe this point was a silly thing to protest, but Sanji’s clothes were an armor, an element of class despite what brutality he indulged in, a symbol that said that he was forever in control, knew just what to do; and without that, Sanji wasn’t in control, and by extension, Usopp wasn’t, and maybe, silly as it was, he would try to explain this to the men holding him down, but there was another rough tug and a sacrilegious _riiiip_ , and then the shirt was in tatters on the floor.

His cheek was pressed against the slab. He could barely see anything, just shadows shifting around. Saint Vinsmoke stood in his line of sight and the fires of the furnaces lit his face like a horror story. He could hear Aðalbjörg screaming, cursing, then deflating, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, this shouldn’t have happened; the furnace door opened with a screech and that cut out all other sound in Usopp’s ears. Masochist that he was, he rolled his eyes desperately towards the furnace, managed to catch sight of a long rod being taken out of the crackling fire, and then the man walking towards him with the red-hot tip as illumination, walking around him, walking _behind_ him, and the slab wasn’t just cold now but cold with his own sweat and he jerked and arced his back before anybody even did anything, he could feel something much too hot getting close to his skin and he sucked in his breath and clenched his eyes shut and _prayed._

“Wait,” said Saint Vinsmoke, and the heat hesitated over his spine like a dangling spider.

It didn’t matter that the bastard was the one putting him in this position in the first place, it didn’t matter that the piece of shit didn’t even consider him as _human_ much less anything deserving of empathy, he was the one who stopped that brand from descending and that meant that Usopp couldn’t help but feel grateful towards him, in some sort of sick, hateful way.

“Not on the back, put it somewhere he can’t hide. His face.”

The slab was now cold _and_ sticky, like all of his pores decided to meld with the metal at once.

A pause, then a voice from one of the interchangeable men that still sounded like a pause, something hesitant that might as well not have been said at all: “’Scuse me, Master Saint Vinsmoke sir...that’s, he might die from that.”

“Considering it’s your job to make him _not_ die, that’s your problem,” was the reply, and fuck, fuck him, sadistic ass that he was, and maybe Usopp said that out loud or maybe Aðalbjörg went back to spewing insults, but it didn’t change that he was flipped over and slammed down again, getting a good view of the brand now, it looked huge, it had to be the size of his head, there would be nothing left of his face except that symbol. “Cut off those ridiculous bangs too.”

Usopp was a coward, and so he closed his eyes again when the scissors came into view. They were ugly scissors, thick, probably used to cutting through meat or something, and he felt their blades on his eyelashes, felt strands of hair brush against his skin and fall off, and that was painful enough except he knew, he knew it was only leading up to that bit of heated metal, he felt the warmth of it approaching and he couldn’t help but let out a whimper and a cry before it pressed against his eye and he screamed, even though screaming opened his mouth and rubbed half of his lips against the burning brand, even though the best thing to do would be to not scream, he couldn’t help but scream and scream long after the brand was removed, he writhed on the slab and peeled his back off the sweaty surface and screamed until he just couldn’t, just tired himself out, and all he could do was breathe and wait until he could scream more. Somewhere to the side, Aðalbjörg seemed to scream for him. But he couldn’t focus on that.

Nothing could distract him from the smell of his own face burning, blistering. He wanted to pretend it was just an itch. Like a giant scab. The initial pain was fading, he was sure, and all he wanted to do was scratch it until it came off. But the itch turned into a throb and then back into piercing pain once more, like his body was starting to realize that it was burning and his brain just got the signal to feel it.

It didn’t help that they heated up the brand again, just to make sure it would be uniform.

No screaming this time. Just reflexive kicks and twitches, until it was all over.

* * *

“BWAAAAAAAH!”

“Dammit, Franky, shut up! We need to get on the ship!”

“B-but, it’s so _saaad!”_

“ _Just get in already!”_

Most of the crew squeezed onto the Mini Merry, but Nami separated and ran for her waver, dragged it upright. “Hey, kid! You getting on or what!”

But before Franky could push the Mini Merry into the sea, before any of them set off, before Annalie could even decide to leave, one of the following slaves shouted, “Wait! I want to come with you!”

“ _What?!”_

“I don’t care what happens as long as I get away from here!”

“Can you really take all of us?” another demanded.

Luffy opened his mouth to answer, but Nami cut in and said, “We can’t wait around and we don’t have more boats for you, so if you want to come, then get to the ship before we leave!”

There was a pause for shock, but only a short one. There wasn’t time for any longer. As Nami zoomed over the sea and the Mini Merry chugged along under its load, the islanders scrabbled for any debris that could float. Annalie’s hidden boat helped, as small as it was, but others made due with finding a good log, rolling it in the water, and paddling furiously the entire way. In the end, everybody made it just as the anchor raised.

“Nice hustle!” Nami said, as their new passengers heaved heavy breaths on the deck.

“Are you trying to kill them?!" said most of the crew, but Luffy just laughed and glanced over to Annabelle, who was among the tired mass.

“So you came anyways, huh?”

She looked up, then away. “What else could I do, with everybody leaving just like that?” Despite her scornful tone, there was something that sounded like relief underneath, and Luffy grinned.

“Enough yapping! The longer we just stand here, the more distance we gotta catch up! That ship is almost _gone,_ people, move it, move it!”

Looking straight at the speck at the distance, Zoro said, “Wait. Don’t release the sails yet.”

His voice was enough to give everybody pause, but Nami said, “Don’t waste time here, we need to save Usopp – “

And then, with a grin too proud to signify anything good, Zoro said, “I have an idea.”

* * *

Ryokugyu would have liked to say she was, first and foremost, a professional. That she only took her dedication to justice and her sense of duty into her line of work. But, currently, she was cursing the fleet Admiral in creative and excessively vulgar ways.

“If I wanted babysitting duties, I’d a’ kept being a vice-admiral! Fucking looking after an old asshole with more shit in his head than his anus – “

“Admiral, please, you need to watch what you say – “

“Next time I see that goddamned piss-stained shithead Sakazuki, he’s _dead!_ ”

“ _Admiral,”_ a marine wailed as softly as he could. “If someone hears you, you could be tried for treason! I’m sure the fleet admiral didn’t enjoy assigning you here or anything, you were just...the closest available commanding officer, ma’am!”

She breathed in through her cigarette and let out the smoke through gritted teeth. It wasn’t a bad brand. Somehow, the smoke tasted minty. Black Leg Sanji had good taste.

Now that she was fuming silently rather than fuming loudly, Ryokugyu’s entourage went quiet as well, so as to not encourage any more outbursts, and they were all left with the waves and the workings of the ship propelling the golden monstrosity over the water. Though ‘propelling’ was a strong word; ‘chugging’ might be more accurate, as Vinsmoke apparently preferred an ambling sort of speed like he had all the time in the world. Maybe he believed that time simply bent around him.

She admired the scenery (might as well since it was pretty much all she could look at the entire trip), blew streams of smoke that shot straight ahead like an arrow and kept going. She kept an eye on it, like a little cloud. It fell behind them. Then it was moving parallel to them. And then towards them.

Ryokugyu straightened up, squinted towards the front of the ship. Squinted behind, and saw a curved trail of foam. Whipped her head around and saw that nobody seemed to have noticed, was it that hard to notice with a ship this slow using an engine other than the wind?

“Why,” she started, her voice not quite a shout but forceful enough to stop all the marines on deck in the middle of their tasks, “have we _turned around?”_

* * *

The den den mushi at the helm started to ring.

Robin’s first instinct was to answer it, but she halted, one hand above the receiver. As talented as she was in general sneakery, she couldn’t say that impersonation was one of her skills. The den den mushi rang with, it seemed, increased fervor. Robin glanced around. The helm was littered with quite a few unconscious marines, all, sadly, male. Probably best not to answer.

Then again, she had never tried impersonating a man before. Maybe she could do a passable job of it. It was better than clutching at the wheel, steadfastly ignoring the ring that was sounding full-on judgmental now. It would also be funny, honestly. But that was probably not a good reason to do it.

The ringing stopped, which was a relief, but also probably foreshadowed an approaching conflict. It would be nice if she could figure out which lever was the ‘go faster’ lever, but the designer of the ship thoughtlessly didn’t leave any labels for would-be hijackers. Very irresponsible.

When something started to pound on the door, Robin turned away from the wheel (keeping a pair of hands on it to keep it straight) and contemplated her barrier of arms. They were holding up for now, but they were also starting to ache, and if the marines actually broke through, then they might actually break her bones, which would be strategically inconvenient.

Presently, the pounding stopped, which meant either the marines had given up or they were winding up for a larger attack. The former was unlikely, so she ought to prepare for the latter – though, given that she knew an admiral was on board, should she fortify the barrier or release it and try to make her escape in the confusion? Was this enough of a delay for the others to catch up? All of that was made irrelevant when the door quite suddenly burst off its hinges, careened through the window, skipped across the ocean, and finally sank out of sight.

There hadn’t been enough time for Robin’s arms to break. Instead, her grasp immediately slipped. In the open doorway stood the admiral, one fist outstretched. Behind her was a hallway of marines.

It occurred to Robin that her shoulder might be dislocated.

“Nico Robin.” Without taking her eyes off her, Ryokugyu called back, “How exactly did she get on board?”

After the mass of apologies that followed, Robin said kindly, “They can’t catch everything, after all.”

“Just for procedure’s sake, are you giving yourself up?”

Robin gave the question its due consideration. “No.”

With etiquette now out of the way, the admiral rushed forward, blindingly fast; but Robin had always known how to deal with that. Arms bloomed from the floor and caught onto Ryokugyu’s legs – but, somehow, unlike every other time she had ever done this, Robin just couldn’t keep hold of her. Ryokugyu continued without a stumble, like the arms grabbing for her ankles didn’t even exist. And so, before she knew it, Robin was the one held in the vice grip instead.

“It’s not easy to stop me once I’m moving,” Admiral Ryokugyu said, her face impassively professional but her voice somewhat smug. “Nico Robin, by the authority granted to me – “

The den den mushi rang.

As soon as Ryokugyu’s eyes flitted towards the den den mushi, Robin grew a bevy of arms and got ready to snap her neck. But, yet another first, Ryokugyu’s head stayed in the same position no matter how hard Robin strained against it.

“It’s not easy to get me moving either,” the admiral said, sounding a little annoyed now. Robin knew the feeling.

“Ah, admiral, allow me,” one of the marines in the hall said, picking his way through his unconscious colleagues and sidling right up to the den den mushi.

“Helm reporting.”

“Turn around! Quickly, we’re gonna crash – “

A second after the line cut out, the entire ship _buckled._ Robin saw the ocean surface briefly become a wall through the open window, before the ship rocked back and tried to settle upright. All around, marines stumbled, fell, went overboard, but the admiral remained standing firmly. Robin took the chance to sprout arms on the distracted marines around her and rendered them unconscious all at once, and upon hearing the stifled cries of her subordinates, Ryokugyu whirled around in shock – and Robin, quite suddenly, was able to break out of her hold. Robin threw herself out of the broken window without hesitation and caught herself with a rope of arms that swung her up to the deck of the ship, whereupon she discovered that about half of the deck was currently being occupied by the Sunny.

* * *

“You _idiot!”_ You _absolute moron! Why_ did I listen to you?!”

“Well, it surprised them,” Zoro defended, using an arm to block Nami’s punches.

“We coulda sunk their ship, asshole! You _want_ Usopp to drown?! And now we’re fucking _beached! In the sea!!”_

As much as Sanji attempted to assault Zoro, the oaf just stared upwards and said, “Is it really ‘beached’ if we’re not on a beach?”

Neither Nami or Sanji had time to knock Zoro senseless, as Franky immediately alerted them about the marines no longer being surprised and instead climbing up on their deck.

The first line of marines was smacked with two rubbery arms. “I’m gonna find that guy,” Luffy announced, already over the side and smashing his way into the gaudy ship below.

The second line was intercepted by a wall of ragged women, and hesitated long enough to get attacked by a wall of pick-axes. Being not very keen about being attacked by pick-axes, the marines stopped hesitating despite their attackers’ appearances and the two groups clashed, until Franky jumped in and barreled through the marines with his sheer bulk. “Alright, ladies! Doin’ super!”

Sanji stood with Usopp’s slingshot in hand. Before they launched Sunny, he had just taken it because...well, not because it felt right, but because it seemed necessary. But now that the chaos was starting, he couldn’t say he knew what to do with it.

The next line suddenly suffered simultaneous snapped necks. “My. How did the Sunny come to be in this unfortunate position?”

“Robin!” Nami cried out, but Sanji immediately belted out a “ROBIN-CHAAAAN!” and carefully danced his way over to where Robin was stepping onto the deck. She smiled politely at him before glancing around the ship.

“I see we have some new passengers. Did Luffy leave already?”

“Yeah, just now,” Nami said, snorting out irritation through her nose. “Didja need to tell him something?”

“I do have the general layout of the ship and information about the admiral stationed here, but I suppose it’s not anything he would necessarily listen to. By the way, should we let the marines push the Sunny off their ship?”

“What?” Nami said just as the Sunny started to shift. She leaned over the railing, only to jerk backwards as a rifle shot at her. “No no no, we’ll slow down and then they’ll open fire!”

Zoro vaulted overboard, deflecting any errant bullets with his swords, and spun on his foot once he landed, sending the nearby marines flying with a whirlwind that happened to also be a little too close to the Sunny.

“Hey! Watch it!” Franky shouted from the ship, slamming his hands on the railing. “You bastard, the keel’s down there!”

“I’ll keep things under control here,” Zoro called back up, gesturing a sword carelessly at the others while he parried with another. “Go find Usopp already.”

“Shut up, shitty marimo! You don’t need to boss me around! Robin-chan, could you lead the way please?”

“I think I have a general idea where Usopp could be, yes.”

“Hold it,” Nami said, grabbing onto Sanji’s collar before he could jump overboard. “Chopper, Brook, you’re coming with us. Franky, you protect the ship.”

“Damn right I am!” Franky replied, pumping the air. The last thing Sanji heard him say was, “Alright ladies (and you two guys), get ready to bust some heads!” before he jumped off, dashed past Zoro, and descended below deck with the rest of his group.

Immediately, Nami said, “There’s a treasure room, right? Do you know where that is?”

“I did see it, yes.”

“Alright~!” Nami sang, giving her comrade a thumbs up. “Tell me the directions!”

Beside her, Brook exclaimed, “Was that the only reason you’re here?!”

“You too. You’re helping me.”

“ _Eeehh?!”_

The three of them watched Nami rush off with Brook in tow down a different hallway as they continued downwards. The plush carpeting and gilded walls started transitioning into bare steel, and something cold burrowed its way into Sanji’s bones.

“By the way,” Robin said after a moment, “could one of you introduce me to our new friend?”

“Who?” said Sanji.

“Oh, I’m Annalie,” said Annalie.

Robin smiled politely and said, “Nice to meet you,” while both Chopper and Sanji tripped down the last flight of stairs and landed on their faces.

Chopper was the one who managed to get on his feet first, and he instantly sprang towards Annalie, hissing, “What are you doing here?!”

She gazed back at him as though the answer was blatantly expected. “You need me to switch them back, though.”

“ _Yeah,_ but _not when we’re fighting!”_

“I heard them! Down here!” Distantly, a rampage of boots came from above, and Sanji got up on his feet and said, “Goddammit, we can’t take her back now, let’s just get this done quick!”

“In here,” Robin directed, and the four of them pushed open the heavy door and slid in before the marines could catch up.

The first immediate thing that Sanji noticed was that it was rather dark in the room. The low illumination served to make the tense situation just that much tenser, and he couldn’t help but feel his pockets for a cigarette, only to come up woefully empty. There was a bit of a dungeon vibe in the air. His mind started churning as it brought up images it had no business bringing up.

The second thing that Sanji noticed were like the three huge, big-ass, hulking guys in the room who were halfway to standing, before Robin twisted their heads at an odd angle and they all clanged against the floor like several sacks of bricks.

Chopper glanced around. “Uh, um, is there a light anywhere?”

“There’s someone chained to the wall over there. And I see someone in the middle, on that table. I’ll go see if I can find some keys on these men.”

There was a shuddering groan to the left – and then, “Who...who’s there...”

Chopper rushed over to the chained woman in an instant, though there wasn’t much he could do without a key. For now, he carefully looked her over with the little light there was, whispering comforting words and a quick explanation of who they were.

But Sanji stepped towards the table in the center, because it was the most illuminated and he already knew who was there, except somehow, what he could see was unrecognizable, and he wanted to say that it was the way the flames in the furnace flickered, it was the way the shadows danced, but there was nothing ephemeral that could explain his hair. Or the angry, red flesh that took up half his face.

Usopp was pallid, and Sanji had to feel for his heart before he could be certain he was alive, and then he choked on his own relieved breath. Robin sidled up to his side and seemed to examine the scene for a long moment, before she tossed a ring of keys towards Chopper. “Unlock those shackles, and then come here. I think he’ll need your help.” If Chopper was worried about such a vague, mild statement, he said nothing, only jiggling keys in the lock one by one, trying to calm down the woman. She was starting to get louder, like she had just woken up, and Sanji heard, ‘It’s my fault, it’s my fault,’ and it felt like those words echoed in his mind and sang in harmony with his own voice.

When Annalie stepped closer, her feet hesitant with the dark atmosphere around, Sanji moved in front of her and leaned down. “Hey. Wake up,” he said, shaking Usopp’s shoulder lightly, then a bit harder. “Shit. _Fuck._ Usopp.”

The woman at the wall noticed this and forced out a, “Wait, be careful.”

Usopp woke with a jolt, almost punched Sanji in the jaw, but stopped at the sight of his own face staring back. Still, his eyes twitched wildly around for any sign of danger, or a trick, or anything, before squeezing Sanji’s wrist and saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” until his voice cracked and he could only sniff and try to cover up the brand with his own hand.

Sanji’s throat started clogging as well, but he babbled anyways, automatically, pulling Usopp upwards. “C’mon. We’re getting outta here. You can’ walk, right? Everybody’s here, Luffy’s already wrecking shit. So we gotta go. What’s this?” he asked, directed to something around Usopp’s neck. It stood out considering that the rest of Usopp’s torso was bare, and Sanji reached out for it automatically, tugged at it, and then it started to beep.

There was a pause. And then a wailed, “ _No!_ ” from the woman, and a harsh, “Chopper, the keys!” from Robin, and just silence from Sanji because, how could he, how could he be such an _idiot,_ how could he come in and make everything worse, and Robin was fitting in keys but none of them were working, and the woman was sobbing out, “He keeps them with him, nobody else, they don’t,” and Usopp was starting to realize too and there was that wretched face of panic, the sort of expression that Sanji didn’t want to see, and then he turned to Annalie, who was just standing frozen, and said, “Switch us back.”

“Huh?” she managed to say, very quietly, under the accelerating beeping.

“Sanji,” Robin said, just as harshly as before, as she threw the keys against the ground. But Sanji, for once, ignored her, and pulled on Annalie.

“Switch us back _right now,_ and then everybody step away, okay? There’s no time to argue,” he spat when he saw Chopper start to protest. Then he stared hard into Annalie’s eyes. “There’s no time.”

Her eyes were starting to water from how wide they were, but they weren’t tears, not quite yet. “B-but...you...”

“ _Do it,_ ” he roared, even as he curled up inside at the decision, but he needed her to do this, the beeping just kept getting faster, he was the only one who needed to do this, it was a way to make up for everything, and Usopp was just holding his head together, clenching his eyes shut and groaning, and finally Annalie reached out to grab him, or rather, grab the collar, and Sanji didn’t see what else she grabbed but it certainly wasn’t him and about a second later, something exploded and it wasn’t the collar, not at all, and everybody standing nearby got blown back by a blast of fire.


	6. Chapter 6

Luffy was punching someone.

This wasn’t odd in and of itself, really, just same old same old when it came to rampaging in such-and-such to go beat up this-and-that. At this point, he could almost tune out completely and go wild. Why pay attention to a bunch of targets that were going down anyways?

But Luffy was punching someone who wasn’t going down, and that was unique enough for him to focus again on his immediate situation.

There was some lady in front of him, looking not very amused about being punched. She said, “Monkey D. Luffy.”

“Yeah? Who’re you?” he said, and then tried to punch her again in case it would work this time. It connected with her hand and then snapped back towards him, as though he had given a friendly fistbump instead. Which was frustrating, because she absolutely did not deserve a fistbump. “Get outta my way!” he shouted out, in case the lady got the wrong idea.

“I’m Admiral Ryokugyu. I happen to be in charge of babysitting this ship.” Upon hearing her rank, Luffy straightened, his fists held tight. “Mind if I ask what you’re here to do, exactly?”

“Get my friend, beat up that Celest guy, become Pirate King.”

“I didn’t ask for that last one. Look, I consider myself a pretty forgiving person. You’re here to get your friend? I can respect that. If you went and snuck him outta here, I could’ve looked the other way, maybe. Plausible deniability, right? Not like I wanna go around arresting people for following their better human instincts. But you just wanted to do this the hard way, huh? Assaulting officers of the Marine law, planned assault on a Celestial Dragon, a direct attack on a peaceful, travel vessel _and_ unauthorized docking maneuvers...are you just here to make my life difficult?”

Luffy had kept his pose up through Ryokugyu’s entire rant, but now squinted. “Uh, I didn’t really listen to any of that. Are we fighting or what?”

The admiral sighed as an answer, and by the time the last of it went through her lips, she was suddenly right in front of Luffy. Before he could react, she kicked him in the face, leaned into her leg, and pinned him onto the floor. “You may be tough, but you still follow the laws of physics like everybody else. Sorry kid. You’re under arrest.”

* * *

“Ah...Nami-san...not to deny the importance of funds, but is this really what we should be doing right now?”

With a lack of ears to pull, Nami could only hook her fingers in Brook’s eye sockets and jerk his skull down. “With Luffy on this ship, it’s _definitely_ gonna sink. Do you really want all those valuables to go to waste at the bottom of the sea?”

“I, I may see your point,” Brook conceded, and Nami let go of his head, allowing him to spring upright once more. Still, he continued to hem and haw as they continued their jog to the treasure room, probably trying to think of a way to continue his meek objections in a way that would not get another lecture. As long as he kept following along, Nami was fine with it. It was important to collect everything she could.

When they finally arrived, it turned out that Nami wasn’t the first one to have this idea.

Several residents of the opulent room looked up when Nami burst through the doors, and even if she had never met any of them, she recognized who they were. The thin and ragged beings collecting the gems in bags. The men in suits overseeing the collection. The bubble-head.

“Dammit,” said the one who could only be Saint Vinsmoke, before turning to one of the ragged people in the middle of carrying a bag to one of the nearby wagons. “I told you to work faster! Useless – “ He kicked the slave over, not paying much heed to how she wheezed out a pained cough and curled up for whatever else was coming. He couldn’t, anyways, because there were currently a staff and a sword heading straight at his face.

Both attacks were blocked by two suited goons. Nami couldn’t even recall their faces beyond a blur of blood as she smashed her Climatact against the side of their heads. Were they meant to be bodyguards? Laughable.

Saint Vinsmoke went remarkably red in the face and flared his nose, like he was trying to vent out the boiling pressure in his head. “How dare you!” he snarled, and Nami scowled back at his indignant entitlement. When he tried to draw his gun, she easily knocked it out of his hand with the end of the Climatact. She also knocked him down with a right hook. It personally felt better that way.

“Brook.” Nami turned, swinging a ring of keys around her finger and flicking it towards him. “Unlock those collars. I’ll keep an eye on bubble-head.”

Under his bloody nose, Saint Vinsmoke was still visibly fuming. He tried to stand up, kept trying to even after Nami kicked him down again. She picked up his gun and aimed it at him, which seemed to at least convey the sort of danger he was in through his thick, pompous skull, but he still said, “Stupid girl; if you played your cards right, you could have lived wonderfully.”

“Oh?” Nami said as a chorus of ecstatic weeping started up behind her. Her face had remained entirely blank, but he pressed on regardless.

“With a nice body like that, I would have gladly taken you, pampered you. You would have a life of luxury with me if you hadn’t been violent!”

She gave an ugly smile in return. “I’ll take the luxury, thanks. Everybody alright, Brook?”

“I believe they are certainly better than they were before,” came the reply above a mass of grateful thanks.

Nami offered the gun to nobody in particular. “You guys can do whatever you want to him. Brook, let’s finish packing all this up and get back to the ship.”

“You’re _still_ after the jewels?!”

“Hey, most of the work’s already been done! Don’t complain!” Nami scolded as she handed off the pistol to a particularly bold-looking ex-slave. The entire group had gone silent at Nami’s invitation and they stood around Saint Vinsmoke with an air of trepidation. Like they couldn’t believe the power they had. Or like they weren’t sure what to do with it. The atmosphere felt like something was squeezing her innards too tight. She turned away from the Celestial Dragon and didn’t look back.

Brook kept glancing behind as they strode to some unbagged gems, though. He kept touching his fingers against his teeth, as if he still had nails to bite. “Is...this the best idea, Nami-san? I, I understand what he’s done, but...”

Somewhere behind her, she heard his voice, still the loudest one in the room, still hotly imperious, as he said, “Give that back. Do it! Your only moral duty is to follow my orders! Are you so base that you immediately forget your place as soon as there’s no imperative to remember it?!” Eventually, someone must have gotten tired of his rants, as he went very quiet very suddenly.

She hadn’t heard the sound of a gunshot, but she still felt that cold lump at the back of her throat. Still, she managed to say, “We’re pirates. I don’t really think we have the right to tell them what to do.”

And she piled the rest of the gems onto the wagons and got ready to head back.

* * *

Consciousness came in fits and bursts. Sort of like the fire popping around him. Sanji tried to get up, but found himself hindered by the sort of dizziness that he associated with blood loss. Usopp wasn’t going to like this much, was his first thought. And then: Oh fuck. Usopp. Everybody. The _explosion._

Sanji rolled himself onto his side, got on his knees, and slowly rose to his feet. It seemed that some high-speed shrapnel managed to get him in the chest somewhere, and a bit in his arms when he had tried to cover his face. His ugly overalls now had a few ugly gashes, the fringes sticking to his open skin in uncomfortable ways. One of his arms was too sore to move, so he just let it hang there.

Robin was already standing, and a woman he didn’t recognize was helping a groaning Chopper up. They seemed better off than him, at least. Maybe because of where they were standing before the explosion happened. Usopp was – Usopp...was pushing that table off of him, coughing, with mostly scrapes, goddammit. And the worst part was he looked surprised too, that shithead, and Sanji almost passed out from fury.

Usopp caught his eye, glanced away, looked again. “I...uh...Chopper, are, are you…? Uh, I think we need. Help.”

“Where’s Annalie?” Sanji said instead.

“Who?”

Chopper sprung up at the name. Didn’t see too much blood. Fur probably helped, and maybe being so low to the floor. He swiveled his head around, and then scuttled to a prone form with unerring doctorly accuracy.

Annalie had been the closest to the blast, and so had been the one to get the harshest burns, the deepest wounds. Chopper cleared the area around her of scrap and unshouldered his backpack. She fluttered her eyes, or at least seemed to, but didn’t move. “She’s alive...but we need to get her to the ship as soon as possible. Who else needs bandaging?”

“I-I, uh,” Usopp said, but looked away when everybody else turned towards him. “I’m, fine. But...”

“I can wait,” Robin said evenly.

“Me too.”

“Are you certain? You look like you are struggling to hold your internal organs in.”

“It’s fine,” Sanji said, a little desperate, as Chopper looked back and forth between him and Annalie. The dim light from the remaining furnaces only served to highlight the sudden dilemma in his huge eyes, but Chopper rustled through his bag and handed Robin a roll of bandages and a bottle of disinfectant.

“Please clean and dress his wounds for now, I’ll do more later. We need to hurry.” And with that, he rushed back to Annalie in a clatter of life-saving chemicals.

For a while, Sanji was distracted by the way his shirt peeled off, the distinct pain of hot air on his open wounds, the delicate way Robin tried to pull out some of the larger bits of metal from him, the strong sting of the smell of disinfectant that almost made him pass out again. But as Robin finally started wrapping the gauze around his body, and he was free to breathe a little and glance around, he found himself staring at Usopp, who was just standing by with his hands under his armpits.

He had never seemed so pathetic, that is to say, Sanji had never seen himself look so pathetic, and so he held up his recently shed shirt and held it up. “Put this on.”

Usopp looked over and wrinkled his nose, looking more comfortably like Sanji. “It’s _bloody._ ”

“Better than nothing at all, right?”

Usopp agreed, eventually, and he took the shirt and pulled it over, and went back to rocking on his heels. “I’m...sorry, that, um. They...your shirt...”

“Just think about getting back to the ship right now,” Sanji said. Robin finished tying off the last bandage and then held out her own arms. Given that Sanji still couldn’t seem to control one arm too well, he gestured Usopp over, and then it was his turn to stand by awkwardly and pace. The pain was starting to – well, not fade, but pulse softer. He could hear pounding ring dully above.

With a start, he remembered; there’s another person here. The woman. He glanced around, found her standing in a corner, just watching. She seemed to tense when he limped up, but didn’t move away. “Are you okay?”

She hesitated, then nodded. She did look rather unscathed. Sanji didn’t remember seeing her ever move from the wall. She probably managed to avoid the worst of the blast. Which was at least one relief in this whole mess of a rescue.

Standing near a total stranger made him feel even more aware of Usopp’s goddamn nose than usual, so he shuffled and turned away and hoped she didn’t think he was a creep or anything. She said, “Um...are you...” but stopped, and so Sanji didn’t know how to answer.

It was while Sanji was trying to ignore his uncomfortable position that he heard something, a sort of hissing noise below the pounding from above. He stepped away. Hunted it down. And eventually found his shoe stepping into a small puddle, steadily growing by way of a few punctures in the hull. Punctures that also seemed to be unable to hold up against the water pressure for long.

“Oh,” he said.

* * *

The den den mushi rang.

Nami and Brook stared at it, looked at each other, looked at the freed slaves who seemed to have elected them as leaders. Looked at the den den mushi again. Nami picked it up.

“Who’s this?” she said.

“Oh thank god, it’s you,” a familiar voice breathed out on the line.

“Usopp! Or...wait, are you still Sanji-kun?”

“Your intuition is as sharply beautiful as always,” came the reply, and it was definitely Sanji. Nami felt a headache already.

“You didn’t find Usopp yet?”

“Oh, no, we did. He’s here, uh, kinda alright. We’re mostly alright here. Maybe ‘alright’ isn’t, uh, the best word? I’m. We’re not dead.”

“Always wonderful news,” Brook chimed in. “Nami-san is not dead either, but I still am!”

How was he _still_ in the wrong body at this point? How was it that the universe was conspiring for the two of them to be in the wrong bodies for as long as possible? Literally the way to have them in the right body was right there with them – unless – “Where’s Annalie?”

“She’s, she’s here too. Uh, listen, Nami-san, I didn’t just call to, we can’t really chat, there’s something I – _oh shit – “_

There was a worrying sound that the den den mushi couldn’t quite convey well, like a crackle and a boom at once and an elongated hissing. “Wwhhhat’s that,” she said.

There was a fumbling sort of noise, and then Chopper’s voice, a little high and panicky but at least to the point. “The ship’s sinking! We gotta get back to the Sunny!”

Oh. She was wondering if the slight tilt was her imagination. “Thanks for the heads up. I’ll see you later. We’ve picked up a few people, by the way. Just so you know.”

“Yeah, okay, good,” Chopper babbled. The crackling noise continued. Might have gotten louder. “Okay, that’s it, see you later, bye!”

As the den den mushi clicked off, the ship chose this time to buckle and groan under the stress it was under. Nami stumbled, then turned to the people in the room. “Well, you heard him! Grab a wagon and let’s get off this ugly hunk of junk!” It wasn’t a beautifully rousing speech, but she got a cheer nonetheless.

* * *

“That’s not good,” Admiral Ryokugyu noted once the ship stopped pitching. “Did you set a bomb or something?”

“Mmph!” Luffy mmphed back angrily, still squirming as much as he could under the admiral’s immovable hand.

She ignored him for the moment, even when he started to punch blindly, occasionally getting in a hit. “Don’t care who, one of you officers go put the order out to evacuate. Everybody else prepare the lifeboats. Ship feels like it’s going down. I’ll get on a boat once I confirm everybody’s off.”

“Yessir,” someone said, then marched off to raise the alarm while the rest ran off to the deck, carefully circling around Luffy’s flailing limbs. Someone lingered, asked, “Don’t you want us to cuff him?” And then the ceiling collapsed under the abuse of all of Luffy’s wild punching, and both Luffy and Ryokugyu were caught in a torrent of plaster, marble, ghastly statues, and some really nice chandeliers.

Something hit Ryokugyu solidly on the head and she cursed, let go of Luffy, and dodged her way out of the debris. Luffy scurried out the opposite direction and disappeared in the dust. One of the marines shouted, “Admiral Ryokugyu?” but the admiral belted back, “Go evacuate! Make sure everybody makes it out!” Her order was met with a little hesitation, but she heard the organized march of emergency procedures being followed eventually. With that dealt with, she squinted into the dissipating dust for where Luffy ran off to.

It turned out, he was hanging onto the lip of the hole he had made, which the admiral realized when he wound up a leg and slammed it into the floor beneath her, making another hole that she instantly fell into. He followed her down and bent over backwards before he landed to avoid Ryokugyu’s grabbing hand, which led to a cycle of dodges and ineffectual attacks in the bowels of the ship. Still, in the middle of it all, Luffy was grinning madly.

“I figured you out,” he practically sang, jumping up and over her head, grabbing her shoulders along the way and managing to pull her down with him. Both of them were back on their feet in an instant. Luffy’s smile took up an alarming amount of space on his cheeks. “Your weakness is falling over!”

His declaration was met by the admiral’s dull stare. “That’s...a bit of a simplification, but yeah. I still gotta deal with gravity. I wouldn’t call it a _weakness...”_

“Nuh-uh! It’s a weakness! You said I can’t move you, but I can!” Luffy shouted, stomping a foot like Ryokugyu had denied him candy.

“You can’t really beat me by making me fall over, though.”

“Yeah?! Well,” Luffy yelled back, but hadn’t thought about what to say beyond that and so could do nothing but stand and pout until he was saved from the awkward situation by the arrival of several members of his crew.

“Ah, Luffy!” Chopper was running up front, clomping around in his Heavy Point form and cradling Annalie in his arms as carefully as he could. He had come skidding around the corner behind the admiral and came to a sudden stop, making Sanji and Robin and Usopp and someone else run straight into him. “That’s right, you don’t know...listen, the ship has a leak! It’ll take a long time to sink but we really should go now!”

Luffy leaned to the side to look past the admiral’s formidable coat and beamed at them. “Hey, you got Sanji! I mean, Usopp! Great, I’ll be over after I deal with this guy.”

“Luffy, _please!_ We’re at the way bottom of the ship, this is the first place going under, we’re in the middle of the ocean, I’ve got people to patch up, we’ve got everything we needed, so forget fighting and let’s _go!”_

“Huh? The ship’s sinking?” Luffy looked up, looked down. Hm, that explained why he had to lean on one foot more than the other to stay upright.

“ _That’s the first thing he said!”_ Sanji roared from the other side of the corridor.

“I said it too,” Ryokugyu added quietly, not quite as frustrated but certainly sounding irate.

“Well anyways, I still gotta do this thing here, so go ahead and I’ll see ya later.”

Admiral Ryokugyu clicked her tongue and said, “I’m feeling a little insulted that you’re not taking me seriously,” before she spun on her heel and sped towards the group behind her. Most of them weren’t expecting the sudden turn and so couldn’t react, while those of them that had witnessed her powers before didn’t have much ideas on how to stop her. But Luffy leapt upwards almost as quickly and jetted a barrage of punches towards the ground at her feet, which she had to move backwards to dodge, until they burst through the bottom entirely and started letting in a geyser of sea water.

“LUFFY YOU ASSHOLE,”said someone on the other side of the gushing water as the ship pitched drastically. Having three devil fruit users in tow, the group quickly started climbing up the nearby stairs, throwing back more curses and threats and wishes of good luck along the way. Luffy bounced back up to the hole in the ceiling, stuck out his tongue at the admiral, and disappeared above. With the water now halfway up her thighs, Ryokugyu didn’t have many other choices than following suit, where she found Luffy already hanging onto the other hole in the ceiling that he had made earlier.

“You are really a test of patience, aren’t you.”

“If you wanna catch my friends, you gotta catch me first!” was his only reply before he disappeared. Soon after, Ryokugyu heard the sound of more debris falling above, and she gave herself a moment to close her eyes and breathe out her nose. She was chasing a child. A child worth billions.

The groaning of the ship reminded her to keep going, and she went up one floor and then the next; he had worked his way back on the deck, and she caught up just in time to see him stretch his arms up to the crow’s nest and then launch impossibly high. Ryokugyu followed by racing up the mast herself and letting inertia carry her up level with Luffy, who was already losing momentum and was on the cusp of tumbling back down.

“Did you think I couldn’t follow you up here?” she shouted above the rush of air, and then grabbed his neck now that he was in a position where he couldn’t easily dodge.

But, disturbingly enough, Luffy grinned back at her. “Nah! I was hoping you would!” And with that, he wrapped his arms and legs around her tightly, around and around until he bound all he could together and they could hardly be seen as two separate people.

Gravity was starting to take hold, and the upsetting feeling of vertigo gripped the admiral’s stomach, and she looked down at a seemingly flat blue and said, “Oh.”

* * *

“There he is!” Franky shouted, pointing upwards at a speck in the sky. Nami, with the binoculars, confirmed the sighting. “That admiral chick too!”

As soon as everybody had clambered back onto the Sunny, Franky managed to tip their ship off of Vinsmoke’s, helped along by the angle of the inevitably sinking vessel. Around them were tiny lifeboats bobbing with marines, who made no moves against them but tensely had watched the ship too. It had been an odd sort of atmosphere, two opposing groups waiting for the exact same things, for one leader to come out, or the other, or both, for some sort of concluding outcome that would dictate which way the story would go.

Other marines were beginning to echo the same information that Franky had said. A forest of fingers rose to the falling mass. “What the hell is he doing,” Nami hissed, scrunching her brow as she tried to look for any sign that they were doing something other than freaking _falling,_ but no, there was no punches or kicks or any flashy moves up their sleeves, just a prolonged struggle as they tumbled down, down.

Zoro muttered something and uncrossed his arms, but Sanji cursed and jumped overboard, still in Usopp’s body, a few seconds before Luffy and the admiral splashed into the sea with a painful sounding _smack._

He had thought to snap the goggles over his eyes before he jumped, which pissed him off all the more because dammit, the goggles _were_ useful. He had forgotten about the arm, his bandaged stomach, and the gauze instantly loosened, unraveled, stung like absolute _hell,_ and that one arm still wasn’t quite right but Usopp’s legs were powerful – not swimmer powerful, and the ankle still kinda hurt, but still really freaking good – and so Sanji could propel himself deeper and deeper, focused on the trail of bubbles and the figures at the end, not on his lung capacity, not on the darkness as the sun failed to pierce the mass of water.

He swam faster than they sank, and grabbed the wrist of a limp Luffy and circled his other arm around the waist of the admiral before struggling back up.

Two people were nothing. Or should have been nothing. Weight didn’t mean much in the water, except maybe when the weight didn’t swim along with him, but two people were nothing, he could handle this. Or maybe handle this with less wounds. And his own body. And more air. And less people, but he couldn’t even consider leaving someone behind. It wasn’t even a matter of choice because it shouldn’t be a choice, not when it came to people drowning in the sea, and if there had been three people he would have picked up the third no matter what, because leaving someone behind was out of the question. There wasn’t even a question in the first place. Just principles and stubborn determination.

But neither of those really had much bearing on how fast he could swim up, and it was taking double the time to even go halfway, and since letting go wasn’t even an option in his mind, then he guess he was in trouble. But someone else had followed him down.

Sanji saw white, and instinctively moved himself between Luffy and the marine, but the guy only reached towards the admiral with a stern sort of look that said that he might be grateful, but he wasn’t going to show it on account of his occupation, and the two swam up together in silence – because they had to, of course, but even if they didn’t, it would have still existed there between them.

Sanji broke the surface with a harsh gasp, and then pounded on Luffy until he heard him breathing before finally drifting back over to the side of the Sunny. The marine moved the other way, possibly going through the same routine, and Sanji climbed the ladder and the marine climbed onto his dinghy and neither of them looked at each other as their separate groups made their separate ways.

It went unsaid that both groups hoped that they would never bump into each other ever again.


	7. Chapter 7

Sanji peered at himself in the mirror, scissors quivering in his hand. His own face stared back. It didn’t quite feel like his. His hair had never looked so stringy, so dry. He looked into those eyes, but they weren’t looking back. Weren’t looking anywhere, really. Just dull. And, there was no getting around it, the angry red brand down the left side of his face. It cut his eye in half. Clawed down his jaw. Left his skin with puffy ridges. When he closed his right eye, everything blurred into a dim soup. Not that his vision was flawless with both open, not anymore.

He pulled a line of uneven bangs out and raised the scissors to it. The ends kept shaking; he thought they brushed up against his eyelashes and blinked repeatedly. He snipped the blades closed, and the strands of hair drifted down to join the rest of their fallen comrades. He ran a hand through his hair, ruffling out any loose bits, leaned over to peer closer into the mirror. Maybe he should ask someone else to do it. (But he would probably never ask, honestly.)

At this point, Chopper was probably ready to tear down the door. He had only let him up here because Sanji wanted to get cleaned up, except the feeling he wanted to wash off wasn’t something that could be washed off. It was the feeling of fitting into a used glove. Of being too stretched out inside his own body. Of taking a step and feeling two different feet land, one physical and the other mental.

Not that any of that was worse than the eye. It would all fade in time, probably.

Sanji slid down the ladder to the upper deck, which was awash with the sort of celebratory music that was Brook’s specialty. All their impromptu guests were pounding their feet on the floor, spinning around and around in old-styled jigs that he didn’t recognize. The sort of jigs that involved lines and switching partners and whirling around in a way that was coordinated and chaotic at the same time. He gave a passing wave down before padding around back into the infirmary.

Chopper looked up at him and said, “You cut your hair.”

Sanji tried to shrug like it was no big deal.

“You said you were just going to wash off. You tried to cut your hair. You used _scissors,_ near your _extremely burned skin,_ that hasn’t even been properly _treated_ yet, and at _no point_ did you stop and think, ‘Maybe this is something that my doctor wouldn’t want me to do?’”

“I did.”

“ _That’s even worse!_ You thought about it and just did it anyways! _”_

Sanji said nothing, just sat on the bed and waited for Chopper to start whatever medical process was currently necessary. Chopper, for his part, sighed – a sign that he was moving away from lecture mode – and brought a tray of swabs and lotions and very many others.

It stung, mostly. Which he supposed was good. Meant the skin wasn’t completely dead or something. But it also itched, far too much to ignore, and even more than that when Chopper started taping a square of gauze over his eye. He couldn’t quite cover the whole thing. They didn’t make gauze in brand shape.

Chopper slapped Sanji’s hand away when he unconsciously started to poke at the bandage. “ _No,”_ he said, like talking to a dog. “You’ll have to wear that for a while. And I gotta change it regularly. It...it can heal, okay? But there’ll be scars. Especially if you _keep touching it,_ ” he stressed. Sanji had to pull his own arm down and keep them clasping onto each other. His leg started to bounce.

“Yeah. Okay. How’s everybody else?”

Better off than you, he expected to hear. But Chopper gave a more kindly, “They’ll live,” and paused to scrutinize his face. The bit of this face that wasn’t a brand. Sanji started to think it was his hair, but then Chopper said, “If it hurts too much, don’t try to tough it out, okay? I can help with that.”

“It doesn’t,” he said, and it was the truth. The worst of it had gone and passed, and he hadn’t even been the one to experience it. He got back on his feet, stretched, almost rubbed at his eye but quickly changed trajectory to his hair. “Should probably cook – “

Luffy burst through the door with his usual din and bellowed, “SANJI’S COOKING!” before bouncing off the other wall. Sanji opened his mouth to – laugh? Shout? – whatever it was, it turned into an involuntary inhale when Luffy grabbed him, picked him up, and almost used him as a battering ram into the kitchen. He then bounded across the room and kicked open the door that oversaw the ongoing square dance outside and announced, “SANJI’S COOKING,” once more in a manner that implied that everybody had to stop everything because Sanji’s cooking, and then very thoughtfully placed a slightly disoriented Sanji onto his feet.

One second later, Luffy sailed straight into the mast.

The kitchen was as it should be: neat, organized, and manned by Sanji’s body alone. The fridge lock worked again (thanks, Annalie), the knives once more fit easily in between his calluses, and, what gave him the most relief, there was no nose in sight.

Until the nose walked right in, anyways.

Sanji looked up from pondering his ingredients as Usopp padded in, his arm in a sling. For some reason, Zoro was there too, perhaps looking for a place away from the constant music, and then the two took in Sanji’s hair and stopped, eyes wide. And then Zoro laughed, the piece of moldy shit. Usopp immediately nudged him in the side, hard enough to actually make him shift, but it didn’t keep him from laughing like an idiot, and it took Sanji threatening to give all the alcohol to everybody outside to get him to even try to stop.

Zoro got himself to some semblance of composure and said, “So is your stupid eyebrow gonna grow back straight?”

This time, Usopp stomped on Zoro’s toes, but he didn’t get any sort of reaction. The goddamn shit just kept grinning like he’d just won a trophy or something and for a moment Sanji was ready to throw down his apron and tackle the shitty oaf from across the counter, but there was a party to cook for and so he said, “Well, let’s shave your head and see what color it grows back. Maybe your wish’ll come true and you’ll become a real boy.”

Zoro was in a good enough mood to barely be offended at that, and slumped into a chair and got comfortable.

Now that the threat of a fight wasn’t imminent, Usopp said, “Need help?” already stepping into the kitchen without listening for an answer.

Sanji pressed his lips together. “No. Why would I?”

Usopp shuffled near the counter like he was storing up static electricity. Stopped when he saw Sanji glaring at his feet. “Well, y’know. I mean. Your...I kinda...just, in case you need some, uh, extra…eeeeyyyyyyy...”

“Eyes,” Sanji finished, and Usopp practically slapped a hand over his own mouth like he had said it.

“Don’t bother,” Zoro drawled from the table. “He’s used to no depth perception. It’s his natural state.”

“Look who’s talking,” Sanji shot back, but Zoro was already asleep, and so Usopp was the only one who could appreciate the joke. Not that he seemed to be in the mood. Sanji started dragging out eggs and onions and such and such. “Anyways, you got one arm there. Not much you can help with. Sorry about that, by the way.”

“But there’s like thirty people out there! That’s like, three times the food you usually cook! Maybe you should ask for help?”

“Aw, fuck off,” Sanji said, and, because he did recognize a certain sensitivity in the air, added, “Don’t actually fuck off, I didn’t mean it like that.”

Looking at Usopp’s face, Sanji sort of felt like he had just kicked a puppy. Or that he had accidentally kicked at a puppy but made sure to whiff at the last possible moment, except the puppy was still hurt psychologically but was pretending that it wasn’t and now it was slowly pacing away with it’s sad little puppy face and wearing a sad little puppy sling and sitting very quietly in the corner.

“Look,” Sanji said before the kitchen got too loud, “Someone needs to prepare space outside for food, so can you, I dunno, figure that out for me or something? Carry out the dishes that get done?”

That was pretty diplomatic of him, in his point of view. Giving someone else complete oversight of something meal-related. Was diplomatic the right word? Whatever. Usopp didn’t exactly seem to brighten, but he did move with purpose. Maybe he ought to make some extra treats. To make up for the recent shit. Clear the air, or whatever it was that needed clearing. But for now, Sanji had to focus on making the best damn meal anybody ever had in their shitty lives, and so he fell into his habitual groove, even as the steam started tickling at his charred skin.

* * *

Somewhere, somehow, Franky had conjured up two long tables out on the deck, which everybody now gathered around like a buffet. Which wasn’t too far from reality, really, with everything that Sanji was sending out, lines and lines of plates being carried by lines and lines of Robin’s arms, both going out and in the kitchen, a constant parade of delicacies that only ended because the ship had to ration _something,_ and Sanji staggered out under an evening sky and took in the sheer joy on everybody’s faces, the joy of having excess, the joy of _having._ He didn’t go down and immerse himself in the atmosphere, but took out a cigarette instead and scanned the crowd. Counted everybody. Glanced around.

Usopp bounded up the steps, looking less subdued, more eager. He was dragging a woman behind him, maybe a little more forcefully than was polite, but Sanji didn’t comment. Instead he said, “Where’s Nami-san?”

“She said she needed to work on stuff and locked herself in her room.”

Sanji nodded, watching Annalie, all bandaged up (boy did her mom give them hell for that) but smiling as wide as anybody else as Franky pushed her on the swing. “Did someone get her a plate?”

“Yeah? Look, listen. I can’t believe this hasn’t even happened yet, so it’s happening right now because you need to know who this is. Do you know who this is?” Usopp stepped aside and gestured to the lady he had just pulled along. Sanji gave her the polite sort of smile he gave to every woman, and she gazed uncertainly back. Shy, maybe. Blonde. Was she the one back on the ship? Back with Usopp? She looked a lot better than she did back then, less heartbroken. The ravages of abuse and slavery still clung to her, but already the new environment was doing her well.

“So,” she said, crossing her arms around her stomach like she was cold. “You are...Sanji…?”

“Correct,” he replied smoothly, his eyes slipping briefly towards Usopp. What was he trying to pull? Suddenly he’s a matchmaker or something? Sanji started to say something more, but Usopp cut him off before he could even formulate a word and said:

“She’s your mom.”

Sanji’s face froze in that pre-word moment, mouth hanging open, smiling without really meaning it, as he went over all his previous thoughts and tried to scrub them from history while simultaneously re-examining the woman – his freaking _mom –_ in front of him, trying to connect her face with a figure he wasn’t sure he had ever thought about, not beyond hypotheticals. He tried to recognize himself in her, tried to scrabble for a starting point so that he could even begin to figure out what exactly he was supposed to do, to feel, think, act, so that maybe once he figured it out he could start doing, feeling, thinking, acting. Realizing that he was lounging against the railing, Sanji straightened up, wired his jaw shut, stuck a hand out ramrod straight. His voice absolutely did not stutter or squeak when he said, tensefully respectful, “Ma’am.”

His mom looked at his hand and shook it in response. Usopp said, very quietly, “Oh my god.

“He’s actually more suave than this,” he was now saying to Sanji’s mom, who didn’t exactly look like she was listening if only because she was looking about as uncomfortable as her son. “I mean, he’s still a loser, but usually he acts...” It seemed that Usopp had no idea how to describe Sanji’s behavior in a way that would be even remotely palatable to a mother, so he made a vague gesture instead.

Sanji’s mom kept shaking his hand. “You are the cook…? The food...was very good.”

“Thank you,” Sanji replied, his hand continuing to be shook. It occurred to him that maybe he was actually the one shaking her hand, and she was just helplessly following along. Or maybe neither of them were shaking hands and the two were caught in some sort of hand-shaking anomaly, trapped in a sort of politeness pitfall. “I, uh, like cooking a lot.” Shut up shut up shut up, please, stop shaking her damn hand!

Somehow, he followed his own advice, and the two of them stared, holding outstretched hands, before they managed to come to some sort of agreement and let go. Sanji could feel Usopp’s growing awkward disappointment and he flung his mind out for something to say that would properly fit a reunion of this magnitude.

“How...are you?” Just kill him now.

“I feel good,” his mom said, nodding vaguely, then fell silent. Something occurred to her after a moment, and she hastily said, “How are you?”

“Pretty, uh, great,” he said, realizing halfway that maybe this sounded disingenuous because of the huge square of bandage over his eye, but he wasn’t really sure how to really sound like he really was pretty, uh, great without sounding even more disingenuous, so he left it at that. Usopp was looking away now, hissing softly through his teeth in a way that wasn’t meant to be heard. Sanji thought that maybe he should embrace her, perhaps, and he raised his arms, but she only raised one and they ended up shaking hands again, this time going through the motion quickly, silently. At some point, Sanji had dropped his cigarette, but he kept standing straight, staring down at his mom. He wasn’t sure when he could stop staring at his mom.

“Alright!” called out a voice with the confidence that Sanji currently wished he had. Nami waltzed out on the deck, glasses balanced on her head and papers flapping in her hands. She shouted, “Quiet down!” about two times before quiet actually happened, and though Luffy continued cleaning the tables of food, he stared at Nami’s authoritative figure as well. It made for a good distraction from what had just happened, and Sanji took it in gratefully.

“So. I know we all wanna celebrate, but there’s a matter of business that we really should deal with at this point. All of _you,_ ” she said, her inflection making it clear she was talking about all the non-pirate passengers. “You aren’t just planning on staying with us, are you?”

The ex-slaves looked amongst themselves and then stared back at Nami. “No,” one of them said. “We’re very grateful to you, but none of us are...pirates, really. We were hoping that, if it isn’t too much trouble, we could stay until the next civilized island...but if that’s not possible...”

“Nah, don’t worry! It’s fine!” Luffy said carelessly from the table.

“Not really. We should really talk about money.”

The previous atmosphere was gone, replaced by an uncertain silence. Usopp muttered, “What the heck is she doing?” and Sanji was caught between wanting to kick him in the jaw and wondering the exact same thing.

“If, if you’re talking about payment, then – “

“No, not yet. I took the liberty of evaluating your valuables.”

“Our _what?”_ But Nami took an example out of her pocket. It didn’t quite glitter – the sun was a little too low for that – but there was a definite sort of shine on its rough surface, a beauty even if it was, simply put, a bit of rock. There were bags and bags of them somewhere below deck, where Nami had set her steal. Or at least, everybody assumed it was her steal.

“They’re not cut, so that decreases their value. But they’re of high quality, for the most part. Not all of them are worth much, but there _are_ a lot of them, and weight is also a factor...all in all, considering the volume, I’d say a fair estimate of the overall worth would be...about six hundred million.”

The dull, calculating way she said the number almost passed over everybody’s heads without comment, but as soon as the meaning of the amount started to sink into everybody’s heads, the delayed reaction rippled throughout the ship until the whole place echoed with the number, “SIX HUNDRED MILLION?!?” like it was a legendary creature that had just appeared.

Nami allowed everybody to get over their shock before continuing. “Of course, there are expenses to take into consideration. Thirty people lodging onboard for a certain period of time...including meals, the cost of consulting...”

“Oi...” Zoro said.

“...a fee for recovering the items in question, the construction of beds...”

“ _I made those for free!”_ Franky started, standing up a little too quickly and dislodging Annalie and Chopper from his lap.

“So the remainder is five hundred million. I can give that to you in cash, and whatever you do with it is up to you. Sound fair?”

Another silence. And someone said, “You didn’t, you don’t have to – you were the one who – “

“You own your work,” said Nami, her voice going from business to something darkly personal. “You can’t let people steal it from you. Remember that in the real world. Anyways,” she added, clapping loudly and handing a piece of paper with a lot of numbers to the nearest guest, “that’s all for business. Meeting over.”

“Ah!” Luffy raised a sauce-covered hand and waved it enthusiastically. “Wait! Wait! I got a meeting thing to say!”

Sanji couldn’t help but frown when he stood up on the table, nudging plates aside precariously, but it wasn’t in the actual kitchen or anything so he let it slide. “Okay! So, like, there’s this, this thing. Something something something dragon? It’s like, a sun, or it turned into a sun, but it wasn’t a sun before because it was a thing those Celest-guys did – “

“Uh...’Hoof of the Soaring Dragon?’” someone ventured, wincing at the words.

Luffy snapped and shouted, “Yeah! Right! So, like, I heard about how someone changed that dragon thing into something else, so it wasn’t the dragon thing anymore! So, like, if any of you guys wanted to do that, then you can do it here.”

“If you wish to obscure the symbol of the Celestial Dragons, then we will oblige you,” Robin translated.

“Surprisingly thoughtful,” Usopp muttered as the people below coalesced into discussions and Chopper jumped in to lecture about the potential risks and Franky solemnly drew up potential designs.

Luffy glanced up and caught Sanji’s eye. “You could do that too!” he said.

“ _No,_ ” Chopper shouted back, but then looked shocked at his own vehemence and toned it down. “Uh, not when it’s, uh, fresh. We need to wait and see.”

Sanji could see everybody suddenly eye him. Eye his eye. It itched again, and he had to hold his wrist down as he smiled wanly and said, “Yeah, sure,” and retreated back into the kitchen.

* * *

When the door opened, Sanji wasn’t surprised to see that it was Usopp. The sniper slunk in and hovered on the other side of the counter while Sanji continued washing dishes upon dishes upon dishes. This time, he didn’t offer help. There _really_ wasn’t much you could do with one hand available.

But he did say, “You alright?” which was vague enough to be casual, even if it wasn’t meant to be.

Sanji took the casual route. “Yeah.” And then, “Are _you_ alright?”

Usopp tried not to sigh, but it came out anyways through his lips in a blustery sort of way, and he ran his fingers through his hair. And, since just a few hours ago, Sanji _had_ that hair, he knew just what a feat it was to do that. “Yeah! Yeah. I mean...” Usopp was studying the lacquered countertop in a very intense manner, scratching at it, which probably would have gotten him pounded, if Franky was here. “I just kinda had a thought. Y’know? And. So. The, uh, brand. Y’know? You...don’t want it.”

Sanji didn’t answer that. It hadn’t been a question anyways.

Usopp took in another breath, moved on to fiddle with the ashtray. He was probably clumsily spilling ash as he spun it. “So, like. I thought a little. And. That kid, Annalie, she could...make it go away, pretty much, right? If you asked her?”

“She probably could,” Sanji agreed over the running faucet. “Probably could’ve done that for her friends too. But they all still have them.”

“But, the point is, like, _you_ could ask – “

“It doesn’t just _disappear,_ ” Sanji said, staring at the way water pooled into a bowl he was holding. “She _trades._ That means she takes _this,”_ he whirled around, pointed firmly at the eye behind the gauze, almost tore the gauze off but stopped himself, “and gives it to someone else. Nobody out there wanted to force theirs on anybody else. I don’t either.”

The whole time, Usopp didn’t look directly at him. Just kept scratching at the counter or playing with the damn ashtray, until Sanji strode over and swiped it, and then he mumbled, “You could give it to me.”

“What?” Sanji said, but he had heard perfectly and immediately answered, “No.”

But this was the point that Usopp finally looked up, his own eyes firm. “I’d be fine with it. You could. We could ask her – “

“No.”

“ – and then I could deal with it instead, which is only fair because – “

“ _No,_ Usopp.”

“ – because it’s my fault anyways,” he finished, quietly. Far too soft for words like that. Sanji wanted to turn around and toss the ashtray against the floor, just so that it would make a harsh enough sound for what this was. He settled for tossing the ash out and getting another cigarette.

“It’s not your fault.”

“Look. I messed up, okay?” His voice was starting to shake, like he had been holding all this shit in and was falling apart from the stress of it.

“It’s not your fault,” Sanji repeated, because he was starting to get pissed and he couldn’t think of anything else.

“I don’t know why I thought _you_ were gonna mess up my body, because I was the one who couldn’t handle it, I wasn’t strong enough, I couldn’t escape, and this happened because I screwed up, so this is all my fault, so you don’t have to feel bad,” he was saying, and Sanji wasn’t even smoking his cigarette, he was just clutching at plates, mugs, wanting to smash something but not able to find anything he could bring himself to smash.

“You fucking idiot, it’s _my_ fault!” he roared back, and he tried to pull at his own hair but remembered that there wasn’t much hair to pull anymore so he just paced and waved his cigarette around, almost chucking it against whatever surface was in his sight. “What the _fuck_ are you even talking about?! What makes you think I could’ve done something different? With an admiral there? With _that_ admiral there?”

Usopp had gaped at Sanji’s outburst, but recovered enough to shout back, “What are _you_ talking about, _‘your fault,’_ how does that even make it _your fault?!_ You weren’t even there!”

“You shouldn’t have had to go through that!” Sanji stopped to jab his cigarette worryingly close to Usopp’s face. “You shouldn’t have to deal with _my_ shit, but you got caught up in it and got hurt! _It should have happened to me!”_

“That’s just survivor’s guilt! That doesn’t make it your fault,” Usopp spat back, and Sanji wasn’t sure why he was getting so angry and he was pretty sure Usopp wasn’t sure either, but the two glared death at each other. “There was absolutely nothing you could do! It was up to _me_ to not get branded, and I completely failed at it! And now you’re the one who has to live with my screw up? It’s unfair!”

“Listen here you little shit,” Sanji said, which was probably unnecessary, but he went ahead anyways, “I was the one they wanted. It was _my_ face that caused this whole shitfest, _my_ history. _I_ should have had to deal with it, but it was you instead, so the _least_ I can do is live with it!”

“Neither of you are at fault.”

Usopp and Sanji turned towards the door. Sanji’s mom closed the door quietly behind her and stood, demurely, in front of it. She took in a rattling sigh that was much older than she was. “Saint Vinsmoke did that to spite me. It was my pride. It was years of his frustration. And he took it out on you,” she looked at each of them in turn, as though she couldn’t decide who was the victim, “because of me. It’s my fault.”

Sanji felt that sort of painful atmosphere of the awkward reunion again and fell silent, but Usopp said, “No.”

She crossed her arms over her stomach again. “You’re talking about that Annalie girl? If anything, I can take that brand. I already have one. It’s nothing new. And...if I’m your mother...then it should be my duty to take it. Shouldn’t it?”

This time, it was Sanji who said, “No.” He found himself stepping halfway out the kitchen, moving in hesitant steps towards his mom, and it occurred to him that he didn’t even know her name, shit. What a piece of shit he was. “You couldn’t live in normal society if you did that. I’m an outlaw, it doesn’t matter for me – “

“Same for me.”

“Shut up,” Sanji hissed at him.

“It doesn’t matter?” his mom repeated coldly. “Have you ever walked around with that symbol visible? Do you even know how other people would react? Do you think they would talk to you the same way? I don’t know about how your life works, but being marked as property, it changes everybody around you.”

“I can handle it,” Sanji insisted at the same time Usopp did, and he scowled at the other and said, “We’re not talking about you!”

“Well, she’s talking to me!” Usopp spouted back.

“I’m talking to _both of you,_ ” his mom boomed in an aggravated mom-ish way, and she dropped her face into her hands with heaving shoulders.

Usopp was the one who approached her, draped an arm around her shoulder. “It’s not your fault, it’s not,” he said, softly. “You didn’t know, okay?” And Sanji finally found himself unable to say anything more. This was something that existed outside of what he knew. So he just watched Usopp and his mom huddle together.

“I _did_ know, I _should_ have known,” she was saying. “They do anything they want to, I should have just played it safe, I _knew...”_

There was something gut-churning about how Usopp could comfortably try to soothe his mom, how they had a bond forged through trial, a bond stronger than the familial ties Sanji held meekly. It wasn’t hate or jealousy or anything like that. Maybe a little jealousy. But mostly it felt like sadly resigning to the fact apparent to him, that his mom was someone he couldn’t get close to, not in the time they had together. It was that feeling that deflated his own anger and got him to breathe out his nose and say, “You know what? Let’s just say it’s nobody’s fault. Okay? Who even gives a shit.”

Usopp stepped away from his mom and turned back to him. “Hang on – “

But Sanji poked a finger at his ridiculous nose and said, “If you _really_ want the goddamn brand so bad, then it’s my fault _your_ body got hurt and I should get your wounds too.”

Usopp pulled his slung arm away, like he had suggested actually taking his arm. “That was an explosion, it wasn’t your – “

“We’re not talking about whose fault it is! It’s nobody’s fault!” Sanji said, throwing his arms up in the air and slamming them back down on the counter. “It’s not your fault, it’s not your fault, it’s not my fault. So let’s just forget the whole goddamn thing! Alright? Alright! This is _my_ fucking brand, and I’m _keeping_ it.” And with that final point huffed out, Sanji strode back into the kitchen and went back to his dishes.

He heard his mom say, “I left you in the East Blue just so this wouldn’t happen to you.”

He heard himself say, “Since you left me, you really don’t have any right to be concerned about what happened to me.”

There was a sharp intake of breath, maybe of three different breaths, and then he heard soft feet marching unsteadily out, and the slam of the door after. Usopp took a step, paused. Sanji could feel him stare at the back of his head.

“What was that,” he said, softly, like he was in awe.

Sanji wasn’t sure what he could say. What _was_ that? He shouldn’t have talked that way. Shouldn’t have upset her, _intentionally_ even, how could he even think of doing that? But he could, and he did, so she went, and soon enough she’d be gone from his life. Again. “We weren’t really compatible anyways,” he said, chuckling.

Usopp hesitated. Said, “Are you okay?”

Sanji turned his head, gave the best smile he could, and replied, “It’ll heal.”


End file.
